Jerry Boyle

Seriously, Brandon Johnson should know better than to continue such a spectacularly racist policy.

He could be really good when he wanted to. He did a slender volume called “Descent To The Dead” about his trip to Ireland and the UK. He may be Orange, but he had good insight to Irish character.

A curse is exactly the right response.
In Chicago whispering “Chinga La Migra” has become a shibboleth for distinguishing friend from foe.

Yeah, it’s rough. I appreciate Jeffers for appreciating that. OTOH, I disagree with his opposition to US participation in WW II, and his “inhumanism” approach to the environment. Humans are indeed the principal threat to the environment, but I’m not willing to say we’d be better off without them.

For a long time I just navigated away from new payment platforms in frustration. Clever vendors and charities wised up, and gave me a button for Apple Pay.

Don’t make it hard for people to give you money. More than once I’ve given up when asked to give up too much of my data. Use well-established payment platforms, no matter how odious they are. I will not give my data to yet another payment platform.

Good point. Irish folks here are weird in that regard, but it’s typically limited to Irish issues.

Jeffers was known for extreme pacifism, and extreme environmentalism. It’s not always appreciated that his attitude was a reaction to his Orange heritage. He went overboard, but I understand the why, and appreciate him as a prophetic voice.

Jeffers, of proud Orange stock, knew what he was getting into when he went there.

I mean, this woman walked on to one of the most disputed plots of land on the planet, totally oblivious to the politics of the place? What was she thinking?

Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us: Manoeuvrings to find out name and school, Subtle discrimination by addresses With hardly an exception to the rule That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape. O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod, Of open minds as open as a trap, Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks, Where half of us, as in a wooden horse Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks, Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

Heaney described the Irish geography ritual pretty well.

I got him to smile when I told him I had come to Ireland to work on extradition, a hot issue at the time. Both the US and the Irish Free State were trying to extradite Republicans to occupied Ireland.

The first time I went to Ireland I’d been in Dublin for less than an hour when a taxi driver asked my name, and scowled: “A planter’s name.”He softened when I identified the Parish where I was baptized, and my grandfather’s IRA unit.

Even in Chicago, my home, we do Irish geography when we first meet to figure out which side of the Irish Civil War our families were on.

Boo fucking hoo. Yes, the Irish will judge you for your politics. I can’t go to Ireland without getting challenged about my name. On one hand, it’s a name with an ancient Irish lineage. On the other, it was adopted by Norman planters. I wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t want to know the difference.

She might have found a warmer reception among Loyalists, so I’m glad she caught some flak from the natives.

It's actually profoundly similar to the way that eugenicist anti vaccine organisations worked to disrupt messaging around COVID (and previously MMR)

2 photos of back side panels of truck, with decals. 1. Your Son, with woman icon. My Son, with soldier icon. 2. Your Son, with icon of makeshift soldier’s grave marker. My Daughter, with woman icon.

I’m an old guy, no longer count as able-bodied, old enough that if you batter me it’s automatically a felony.

The last time I smoked on CTA I wasn’t even old enough to smoke, so it’s not me. But wtf? CTA is never gonna be the cush service you got on your Metra commuter train from the burbs.

The latter are common. I hear a peer gripe about crime, and shoot back: “What the fuck! It’s a lot safer than when we were growing up. Snap out of it!”

I think our crime problem is two-fold: (1) people who grew up in the burbs and it’s time for them to move back, and (2) folks who grew up here, enduring much higher crime rates than we have now, with minds addled by copaganda.

From “stand down and stand by” to “stand up!”

No drone has hit Chicago. It was a grenade launched by Border Patrol.

Fined for peddling bullshit health care services to hapless consumers? Pivot to selling religion, an inherently bullshit service; the First Amendment guarantees your right to peddle it.

I used to say that the day the Brits withdraw from Ireland is the day I go Episcopalian. I even said that years ago to an Episcopal Minister as he was about to take an arrest at an immigration protest.
But I’m not so sure now.

See also immigration, where the Church has been strident. That’s a contrast as well. Francis was a pivot.

The Catholic hierarchy was largely AWOL on the Iraq War, so much so that some friends caught felonies for disrupting a Mass by our then-Cardinal with an anti-war protest. Dude was fashy.

That’s my Cardinal. This is a sharp contrast with the Iraq War, when it was the reformed faiths leading the Christian opposition to the war.