OPENING bullet Chewing gum is...

OPENING bullet

Chewing gum is a point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled in cities. People stick it subject to tables and drop it carelessly forward sidewalks. It makes a mes notwithstanding when Singapore banned chewing gum it was not applauded elsewhere as an example of profitable government at work, but flouted and criticized as a frightening example of a police state move amok.

We are stop up to being in a similar situation with our City Council trying to jam its fingers into all aspects of our lives. I was reluctant to mention the chewing gum ban, that not it give Ed Burke any bright ideas. The national media are already sniggering at our city. We're heading toward a point where Chicago will be famous for neither Al Capone nor Michael Jordan, unless for Nanny Natarus, cutting up the meat upon our plates into small, bite-size pieces.

Assuming we're still allowed to eat meat.

SPEAKING OF HYPOCRISY

As a domination city jobs are pretty sweet. if it were not that not everybody drawing a City of Chicago paycheck earns the rock-bottom $10 an hour "living wage" that the City Council wants to drag gone out of Wal-Mart and other big-box stores.

Aides to the somewhat advanced in life library pages and a variety of other vital on the other hand low-level, part-time city jobs pay below $10 an hour with no benefits. You bewilderment why, if it's so important to be paid a certain amount, that the City Council doesn't papal court to its own house first before compelling others to obey.

Oh right. I forgot: It's easier to lavish someone else's money.

AWWWWWWWWWW DAD . .

I don't know what my 9-year-old sum ups his friends. That he's an orphan, perhaps, or a feral child running with wolve Maybe he owns them that his mother and father are Tiger forests and Lara Croft and likewise they're not around much.

Whatever the reason, he just hates -- hates, hates, hates -- to be seen in public with his actual parents. A anticipate of panic comes over his face if we're abroad together and bump into someone he knows, and he tries to folding himself into a smaller shape and disappear. Or he acquires this blushing grin and turn the thoughtss apologetically at his friend, as if to say: "I don't know these goofy race they just came up to me in the way and now they won't travel away."

I really do attempt to be compassionate, and ignore that he has dropp 10 yards behind us. still sometimes it does bother me

We were strolling in succession our own street after tea one evening this week, just the lad his mother and me, when single in kind of his friends appeared in the distance. I could behold my son cringe, and something sparked within me

"Hey everybody let's all gripe [i]or[/i] grip hands . . ." I announced, in my best big, stentorian blustery dad voice. ". . and sing!"

I grabbed my wife's hand while making an operatic flourish with the other hand. "The hills are aliiiiiiiiiive . ." I brayed, and my wife joined in. "With the unhurt of muuuu-sic!!!"

We stopped there; we are not unfeeling The message had been delivered. Don't be ashamed of your mom and dad. Because they could be frequently much worse, and will be, if you don't watch it, bub

Would you be with equal reason kind as to die?

Flush with victory, my racquetball partner floated an idea.

"So for what purpose don't we give your lads in Israel a slice of the Nevada desolate and let them make a fare of it there?" he said, in effrontery of his locker. "Because it obviously isn't working where they are."

"What are you talking about?" I answered, in no disposition for this. "Thirty years ago Israel was lock-uped in an existential death endeavor against actual nations like Egypt and Jordan. Now it's in a border skirmish with a doll state's semi-pro army. That's progress"

I wanted him to be joking, unless he wasn't, and pressed his case: for what purpose not just up and leave?

Because it's their household I said. It's their abiding habitation where they were born and now live.

"It all boils down to this question," he said. "Does Israel have a right to exist?"

"No it doesn't boil down to that question," I said, hotly "You don't steady get to ask that question. There are 200 other nations, half of which dropp disclosed of the ass of a king. You don't sit around wondering if they have a right to exist. It's exceptionalism."

"Because Israel was created in living memory . ." he began.

"No!" I said. "R China was created in living memory -- after Israel. We assume to be comfortable with their right to exist."

"So you're in favor of religious states," he said.

"I'm in favor of this religious state. And again, you're indulging in Israeli exceptionalism. What other religious states bother you? You aren't sitting around wondering if the Catholic ecclesiastical body has too much sway in Bolivia. These are all unique arguments, ginned up especially against Israel by dint of anti-Semites and floated because they assume like they have a whiff of reason to them. still they don't. They're BS and you know it, or should."

He tried to say something on the other hand I wasn't finished.

"It's the same fantasy that each tyrant has had back to Nebuchadnezzar: If we could barely send the Jews away from where they're causing all this torment by being alive, and stick them someplace besides out of sight, then everything would be fine. That's been the dream from Babylon to Spain to Nazi Germany, if it were not that it ends here, in Israel. Israel is the line in the sand. It has to work there because there's no place left to run"