Trump brings bad name to people who want to lambast ‘politically correct’

I have always had my problems with people who want to complain that our society is too politically correct, or that politically correct is an abhorrent concept.

TRUMP: Won't listen to Mark Twain!

They try to make it seem like their viewpoints are somehow being censored; their attitudes are being silenced as part of some agenda that singles out people like themselves for abuse.

WHICH IS NONSENSE! As ought to be evidenced by the recent days of activity involving New York real estate developer Donald Trump’s fantasies about becoming U.S. president in next year’s election cycle.

If anything, Trump is giving us the classic example of what is wrong with people who want to complain about “political correctness” run amok. And I’ll be the first to admit I can be the most blunt of speakers at times.

Because Trump has tried claiming that the concept of political correctness is what is behind the people who want to criticize his attitudes toward women and the fact that Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly (whom I’ve had my own objections to at times) used the recent Republican presidential debate to call him out on it.

Trump wants us (the electorate) to think that he’s the victim. Because the fact that someone would criticize his demeaning thoughts about women (and they are truly demeaning). When he followed up with the comments that many interpreted to be about Kelly’s menstruation cycle (he now says he meant it was blood from her nose), he responded by claiming offense that anyone would think he was a “deviant” capable of being so crude and boorish.

THAT MAY BE the biggest laugh of this whole situation – that Trump would be amazed to learn that people don’t associate class and sophistication when they hear his name. As if all those gaudy structures he built throughout the years wasn’t enough evidence.

Scouring the used book stores for original PC

Now, Trump would like to turn this talk into a political correctness debate – claiming that his attitudes are being censored by that segment of the Republican Party that sees his campaigning as an embarrassment and a distraction to the remainder of the GOPers who have desires to run for president.

Except that he comes across the way too many people come off when they use the phrase “politically correct” as an epithet – it always seems like what bothers them is they can’t use words like “n----r” or “f----t” (as in the racial and homosexually-oriented slurs) without having other people around them crack down upon them for expressing their ignorance so clearly.

Proving the truth behind the old adage from author Mark Twain, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

EXCEPT THAT TRUMP seems determined every day to prove how much more foolish he can be – and how absurd it is that anybody takes his presidential talk seriously.

Is this really the face of a threat to our society?

It all reminds me of when I originally heard the “political correctness” phrase – some three decades ago when I was in college and the latest trend was to eliminate disparaging talk by replacing them with phrases that no person would use in natural speech.

People aren’t short, they’re height-challenged. They’re not bald, they’re follicle-challenged. Those phrases come across as nonsense-talk; they’re not a linguistic change I’m about to fight for. It was a fad that withered away quickly enough.

But that phrase has become the epithet that too many people use when they want to cut off opposition debate – the tyrants who think the whole world is supposed to shut up and do what they tell them to do.

BECAUSE THAT NOTION (which is one that I find to be as un-American as possible) better fits the Trump campaign mentality than any idea that he’s being picked on by women.

Which makes me think we’d all be better off if the Trump campaign were to go the way of other fads such as the pet rock, beanie babies or those people who used to dance the Macarena.

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Immigration appeals to the nation’s hearts and minds in coming months

The fight over revamping our nation’s immigration policies into something that makes sense is going to become a battle for the hearts and minds of our society, and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is likely to become a visible part of it.

The Washington Post reported this week how Democrats are trying to plot a strategy by which they will present an image to sway people over to backing the desire of President Barack Obama to revamp immigration policies in ways to prevent families from being split by deportation.

IT’S GOING TO be a bi-lingual approach. There will be many appeals to people to whom Spanish is a significant language in their lives.

It likely will be along those lines that Gutierrez, who long has urged the need for serious reform and was upset at how long it took Obama to act, and other members of Congress will be explaining just how detrimental it really is to our society to let the conservative ideologues have their desires of a policy that stresses deportation over all other changes.

The point being that conservatives who are counting on a new Republican majority over all of Congress to tout their nativist desires are going to be throwing out their own share of rhetoric about the evils of Obama using his executive order powers to implement some changes without Congressional approval.

Admittedly, it would be better if Congress would act on a comprehensive plan to fix the flaws in immigration laws that turn it into a bureaucratic nightmare for those who have to endure it.

BUT THE REPEATED failure of Republicans in Congress in recent years to even consider the issue gave Obama the moral high ground to take some action – one that various polls show a majority of people can support.

The ideologues, however, will want to believe their minority viewpoint is the one that represents the thoughts of all people. If Obama isn’t careful, too many people will come to view their twisted line of logic as fact – just as there are those who ought to know better when it comes to health care reform.

That was an issue where backers of making health insurance more readily available were not aggressive enough, and wound up letting the opposition dominate the debate with their trash talk.

Gutierrez & Company are meant to prevent the same from happening with immigration reform. There also will be the case that Spanish debate will wind up being dominated by the Obama backers – unless Republicans can start finding Latinos capable of badmouthing immigration reform with a straight face.

THAT’S SOMETHING NOT likely to happen!

The trash talk has already started. On Thursday, the GOP-run House of Representatives gave its support to a measure expressing its opposition to Obama on immigration reform. It is a measure that the (for another month) Democrat-led Senate will ignore.

At least it isn’t any of the nonsense talk about defunding the federal government to cause a shutdown of services to the public.

Although the Washington Post reported how there is talk of acting early in 2015 to cut off funding to the Department of Homeland Security for programs that relate to immigration law.

IT SEEMS THE ideologues are hoping they can get people all worked up against Obama so that if there is a future government shutdown, people might be inclined to blame Obama for it.

Even though history shows that whenever Republicans try to shut down government services for ideological reasons, the public sees through the tactic and winds up blaming the Party of Reagan (who himself is probably rolling over in his California grave at the short-mindedness of his alleged ideological colleagues).

How else to explain the nonsense lawsuit that got filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas that seeks to have a federal judge strike down Obama’s executive order? Sixteen other states, including the knuckleheaded Hoosiers and Cheeseheads to the east and north of Illinois, joined in that lawsuit.

I just can’t see any federal judge attuned to the realities of life in south Texas – where it is the Mexican-Americans who are the majority of people and where it is blatantly obvious that the U.S./Mexico border used to be significantly to the north of the Rio Grande – having the nerve to go along with such xenophobic tripe.

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Debating the meaning of debates

We’ve all heard the countless number of political pundits who claim that Mitt Romney revitalized his presidential campaign by showing he actually has a pulse when he performed in last week’s first debate of this election cycle.

BIDEN: The avenger?



There have been many analysis written that say Romney may well be on the path to a Nov. 6 victory, while others are trying to figure what President Barack Obama will have to do to either overcome the Romney advantage (or take back a lead – depending on one’s partisan perspective) come Election Day.

WE EVEN GOT that ultimate acknowledgement of people paying attention – a Saturday Night Live parody of a debate that showed an Obama character as some stuffy government geek getting smacked about by a man named Mitt.

On Monday morning, I sat through an analysis claiming that Vice President Joe Biden would have to go on the offensive in his debate scheduled for Thursday against GOP VP hopeful Paul Ryan if there is to be any hope for the Democratic ticket.

Yet I can’t help but think that all this analysis is such overkill!

Is this really all a matter of the ideologues shouting so loudly that we, the real people of the electorate, are assuming that volume somehow infers a touch of truth?

I’M NOT ARGUING that Obama really “won” the debate held last week. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see it. I had to work that night, and by the time I was finished and in a position to sit in front of a television set to pay attention, the event was in its final seconds.

I missed it! And a part of me thinks I’m probably better off. I suspect that watching a political debate kills off more brain cells than having enough drinks to warrant an 0.08-or-higher blood/alcohol level.

But I can’t help remember a conversation I stumbled into last week out in suburban Sauk Village.

RYAN: The clincher?



Three men, all of whom were solid Obama supporters, remain convinced that all the political pundits and analysts don’t have a clue what they’re talking about when they say Romney won.

THEY CLAIM THAT all the facts and figures that Romney used in his argument were so blatantly false that it should be held against him that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. All emotion, and no substance, is the way they’d characterize the Romney campaign – both before and after debating. Which was the gist of the Chicago Sun-Times editorial on the debate; Romney won on "emotion,"while Obama won on "fact."

It also amused me to hear these men say that it is unrealistic to expect Obama to be able to “fix” the economy in a four-year term – considering how much it was mucked up by a previous GOP administration.

What is amusing to me is the fact that too many of the Obama people really seemed to have a fantasy vision of what Obama was – as though they expected miracles and are now disappointed to learn that he’s a mere mortal.

And not just mortal, but a man who had some serious ideological opposition standing in his way – doing everything they could to thwart him and ensure that nothing he tried to do would succeed.

THE FACT THAT there have been some successes in an Obama Administration (although not as many as we’d like) is probably a sign that he might be worthy of “term two.”



If they say Mitt won, he must have



But that ultimately will be a choice for the voters to make when they start casting ballots at early voting centers later this month; along with at polling places proper on Election Day. That is, assuming they get themselves properly registered to vote – the deadline for which is Tuesday.

And I remain convinced that the bulk of people have already made up their minds. Not on Thursday, nor next Tuesday when the presidential candidates do their “town hall” format confrontation.

They’re not really going to be swayed by which person can shout down the other!

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‘Confused politician’ truly redundant. Or, does 'slammer’ serve good beef?

“This isn’t a double-negative?”

GORMAN: Making sure she doesn't vote wrong

That bit of skepticism and concern came from the lips of Cook County Commissioner Elizabeth Doody Gorman, R-Orland Park, when she and her colleagues were voting on a measure Tuesday that had instigated hours of debate at a previous meeting.

GORMAN WAS CONCERNED she was about to vote the “wrong” way on something because maybe the issue was worded in a way that she’d have to vote “no” to support something.

In fact, she wasn’t the only person confused. It took nearly 15 minutes to take a roll-call vote of 16 individuals (county Commissioner Earlean Collins, D-Chicago, was absent) because everybody was clueless about what was happening at that moment.

Commissioner William Beavers, D-Chicago, engaged in a back-and-forth repartee with the board secretary to ensure that his “yes” vote really was an affirmative one that meant exactly what he intended it to mean.

I would say it was amusing to watch. But the fact that it was our tax dollars at work made it most-definitely a chore.

WHAT WAS AT stake was the food service contract for Cook County Jail (yes, if we incarcerate people, we have to feed them).

Aramark, based in Philadelphia, had the contract.

But the county is now going to transfer over to Sioux Falls, S.D.-based CBM Managed Services, which has a division that specializes in food service at correctional facilities across the country.

It seems that one of the potential perks is that CBM is capable of offering the inmates a culinary treat – if they’re willing to pay for it themselves.

ONCE THE TRANSITION is made and things are up and running, inmates being held at the county jail will get one night a week where they can have an Italian beef sandwich for their dinner (a Buona Beef brand sandwich, I’m told).

Before you start getting all worked up about inmates being coddled, keep in mind that the only ones who will get such a sandwich will be those who have enough money in their jail inmate accounts to cover the cost.

But I can envision the rants and rages of the alleged “law and order” types, and perhaps that fear of instigating these people is what caused the county board members to be overly cautious about casting their votes.

Because this is exactly the kind of issue that gets distorted into a nasty attack ad or the subject material for a campaign mailing by some future opponent who figures real people don’t have time to figure out the “truth” behind the attack.

THEN AGAIN, THIS probably was the ultimate example of “fear and ignorance” combined in our government officials. It definitely wasn’t a pretty sight.

In the end, the measure got a 13-1 vote, with county Commissioner Joan Patricia Murphy, D-Crestwood, being the lone “no” vote. Two other commissioners cast “present” votes – which probably means they couldn’t figure out at all what they should do when they were finally confronted with the roll call.

And soon, the inmates of our county jail will have a food option that might make their incarceration while awaiting trial (or serving a short sentence for a minor offense) just slightly more bearable.

Not that I would want to be held as an inmate for any length of time. Getting a sandwich stuffed with something other than bologna just doesn’t seem worth it.

AYKROYD (as Blues): Not a fan of the oatmeal



EVEN IF THE Cook County Jail develops a reputation for serving a quality beef sandwich!

I suspect that for most of us, all we’re going to know about the food at the jail is what we learned from The Blues Brothers film – namely that the oatmeal is lousy.

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Will Friday be ancient history by Nov. 6 for Ill. Eighth Congressional voters?

It was billed as the first debate of Election ’12 anywhere in the nation. With just under six full months to go before people cast their ballots, Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., gave Democratic nominee Tammy Duckworth a chance to confront him.

DUCKWORTH: Not the typical challenger



Which strikes me as being strange. Incumbents usually go out of their way to avoid recognizing their opposition, particularly one with as much potential strength as Duckworth.

WHY WALSH WOULD be willing to appear against her on Friday (in an event that CLTV then broadcast live to anyone with cable television) is something I don’t get.

Even if you buy into the idea that a debate between the two has to happen eventually, this is something I would have expected to occur some time in October, with the only real question being whether it would occur just before Election Day, or would there be a chance for more than one debate.

About the only possible strategy I can think of is that Walsh thinks he can “get this thing over and done with now” and hope that everybody forgets all about what was said Friday night.

We’re supposedly going to get “a debate a month” that I think creates many opportunities for gaffes – which is what modern-day political debates have really become about.

WE, THE VOTERS, hope that somebody says something stupid, so that we can justify voting against them. It strikes our lazy selves of having to seriously pay attention to what the political people have to say and where they stand on various issues and put some thought on whom to cast a ballot for!

Then again, the vast majority of people are going to cast a ballot for the candidate of the political party they want to see have a majority in Congress – which really translates into whether or not we want President Barack Obama to have a sympathetic Congress, or a hostile one, for the next four years.

WALSH: Too eager to debate?



So in watching the debate (I’m writing this commentary while the event is taking place), I couldn’t help but wonder if those of us who are bothering to view the event are taking this way too seriously.

For this is the election cycle that many people think has already dragged on too long, and that we’re dreading because we really don’t want to hear all the hostile rhetoric that is going to be spewed by both sides.

IT MAY WELL be a case of a debate occurring way too early (personally, I think early September is early enough) for people to take it seriously.

Most people, I’m sure, managed to find something better to do with themselves Friday night (although I wonder if watching “Good Times” and “Sanford and Son” on the ME-TV channels counts as something more significant).

Most viewers will learn about what happened Friday night by the 30-second clips they view on a newscast – or on the longer gaffes put on various websites by people who are eager to highlight someone’s vacuous answer to some particular partisan question.

And by Monday, many of us will have moved on (such as how did Chicago White Sox slugger Adam Dunn manage to avoid breaking the major league record for the most consecutive games in which he struck out at least once?) to some other issue.



The people who will decide this election come Nov. 6



WILL WE BE all obsessed with the way in which Walsh repeatedly tried to turn every question into a critique (“most anemic recovery,” he calls it) on the national economy? Even though it can be argued that the Republican partisan strategy meant to dump Obama IS the reason that federal officials can’t focus on measures to jump-start our nation into a significant financial recovery!

And personally, I couldn’t help but notice Walsh’s description of the “Tea Party” as being, “the silent majority in this country.” Which to my mind echoes the rhetoric of Richard M. Nixon during his ’68 presidential election bid.

Is “Tricky Dick” really the image that Walsh wants aligned with him in a district with significant Latino and Asian populations to go along with suburban white people – the reason why Duckworth is considered to be the front-runner come Nov. 6?

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EXTRA: Coffee, or milk?

Who’d have thought that girl scout cookies could be a subject for debate for hard-core Chicago political types?



MURPHY: Plugging the Girl Scouts?



Yet that seems to be the case, as the matter of those pastries peddled each year to help raise money for Girl Scouts of America programs managed to creep its way into the debate of the Cook County Board.

THE MATTER STARTED when county board member Joan Patricia Murphy of suburban Crestwood sponsored a resolution asking the county board to praise the Girl Scouts – who are getting recognition all over the place these days because the organization is 100 years old.

One full century of existence will even get a resolution from the Cook County Board, which was in a mood Tuesday to praise just about everything. (For the record, Murphy was not a Girl Scout – but her daughter was).

Anyway, such a resolution meant that many county board members felt the need to say something spirited about the Girl Scouts.

Even county board member Deborah Sims of the far South Side, who managed to find something sort of negative to say – she says she believes that the recipie was changed for the Peanut Butter sandwich cookies.

SHE SAYS THEY don’t taste the same as she remembers them from when she was younger, and she wishes the Girl Scouts would go back to making them the old way.

Leave it to county board member William Beavers of the South Side to feel compelled to disagree.

He says the cookies are still “delicious” and knows that for a fact because he had four of them for breakfast – along with his cup of coffee.

Have they really changed?

Which led to a one-on-one discussion between Beavers and Sims, with the latter pointing out to Beavers that the only way to truly enjoy a Girl Scout cookie is to dunk it in a cold glass of milk.

SO DOES THE presence of coffee somehow cover up potential flaws in Girl Scout cookies? Or do Chicago politicos have to become a batch of milk drinkers in order to appreciate the delicacy?

Which may be something that Beavers will want to savor now – particularly if federal prosecutors ultimately succeed in their case against him and make him a room-mate (so to speak) of our state’s “illustrious” former governor (one day left of freedom) who has indicated he will give us his “last words” on Wednesday.

Why do I suspect that the Sims/Beavers exchange about Girl Scout cookies will wind up being more significant than anything Rod Blagojevich has to say.

Maybe we should stuff a Girl Scout cookie in his mouth (a Samoa?) to shut him up.

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