But not the endorsement of the former democrat governor and her membership in mom’s demand action has not been suppressed. Of course given her side business her membership in “Mom’s Demand Action” gets an entirely new meaning.
Apparently the St. Louis Children’s hospital has decided that due to a new Missouri law the risk / reward business of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors has shifted to the point where they now decline to do such things.
I suspect that as laws change and lawsuits progress this type of decision will be more common.
Alas the gravy train might have ended but there are still plenty of kids whose lives have been ruined to keep psychologists in clover for decades
The risk reward ratio however has also shifted in DC and New York at least for kids and crimes.
The decision not to go after juvenile crime has had rather nasty consequences, both in DC and NY for the citizens, but not yet to the point where it’s has had political consequences for those who have decided to go soft.
Finally Mitt Romney has announced he will not run for re-election to the US senate thus avoiding an embarrassing loss for his senate seat in the primary.
I’ve never forgotten that Romney inaction as MA gov was instrumental in killing a state vote on gay marriage when the Massachusetts SC by one vote began the slippery slope that got us where we are, however he was also quietly active in the Scott Brown campaign which really launched the Tea Party as a successful group.
His despicable enabling of the left’s attempts to destroy Trump has caused many to say they regret their vote for him in 2012. I don’t regret mine in the least, because the alternative was Barack Obama whose third term under Joe Biden has been even worse than his first two.
For the second straight post at Da Tech Guy, I’m writing about crime in Chicago.
Outside of the Oakland Athletics, who are on pace to lose over 110 games and may be headed to Las Vegas next season, no MLB team has had a worse season than the Chicago White Sox.
Predicted to finish around the .500 mark–which is where they finished up, exactly, in 2022–the South Siders never recovered from an April 10-game losing streak.
The Sox on are pace to lose 100 game this year, which is how many they lost in 2018. That season, the White Sox unloaded several veteran players, kicking off a rebuild project with the goal of bringing the World Series championship back to the South Side for the first time since 2005. That rebuild brought the Sox to the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, but they won only two playoff games–losing five.
Another teardown occurred this July, the White Sox are in rebuild mode again.
August has been even worse for the Sox. Longtime team owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, known to be loyal to a fault with the front office staff of the White Sox and the Chicago Bulls–Reinsdorf owns that team too–uncharacteristically fired the top two men in the White Sox front office, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams. A couple of days later, news broke that the White Sox, a charter member of the American League, might move out of its current stadium, the state-owned Guaranteed Rate Field, its home since 1991, to elsewhere in Chicago, or perhaps to the suburbs or even Nashville. The Sox have six years left on their lease at Guaranteed Rate Field.
On Friday night, in a game where the Sox were punished 12-4 against those otherwise awful Athletics, a female fan in the left field bleachers was shot in the abdomen, another woman was grazed by a bullet.
A move to the suburbs–perhaps joining the Chicago Bears in Arlington Heights–or to Tennessee, probably is more attractive now more than ever for Reinsdorf.
The woman who was shot Friday night is in fair condition, the fan who was grazed by the bullet declined medical care.
According to the quite reliable CWB Chicago, police officials are exploring the possibility that the bullet that wounded the woman may have been fired from a mile away. A gunshot detection system detected gunfire a mile southeast of Guaranteed Rate Field–in the Bronzeville neighborhood. The White Sox and the CPD, in several statements, have said that the shooting was not part of any altercation inside the ballpark.
If CWB Chicago is correct, the Sox and the city of Chicago still have a big problem. And there is an historic precedent that bodes poorly for professional baseball on Chicago’s South Side.
The rise in criminality since 2020 has been the dominant news story in Chicago, despite subtle attempts by the mainstream media to minimize it. Headlines routinely speak of people “injured” in shootings, rather than using the correct verb, which is “wounded.” The first Chicago Police Department statement on the Guaranteed Rate gunshots spoke of a “shooting incident,” rather than a “shooting.”
Another MLB “shooting incident,” actually a homicide, took place during batting practice before a July 4 doubleheader between the host New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds–in the Coogan’s Bluff area of upper Manhattan in 1950. The post World War II decline of New York was underway, although the city was years away from bottoming out. The way NYC’s fictional doppelganger, Gotham City, was portrayed in the Joker movie is a pretty accurate portrayal of what New York was destined to become.
A teenager, in a twisted way to celebrate the Fourth of July, fired a gun from the roof of an apartment building a half-mile away from the Polo Grounds. A fan sitting in the upper deck, Bernard “Barney” Doyle, was instantly killed by the stray bullet. A horrifying photograph of Doyle slumped over, dead of course, was on the front page of the New York Daily News the next day. That pic probably gave New Yorkers nightmares for years.
The Giants struggled at the gate in the 1950s. Despite winning the World Series in 1954, only 1.1 million fans crossed the Polo Grounds turnstiles that season. In their last two seasons at the Polo Grounds, only the pathetic Washington Senator’s had worse attendance. City Journal’s Clark Whelton, writing about the Doyle killing in 2018, claims the crime was “quickly forgotten.” I’m not so sure. But Whelton did add of the team’s owner, Horace Stoneham, that he was “said to have brooded for years about Doyle’s strange demise and the run-down buildings on Coogan’s Bluff.”
In 1958, the Giants and Dodgers abandoned New York for California. When they arrived, there were plenty of Giants and Dodgers fans who had moved out to the Golden State before them.
As our day jobs wind down, Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I are eyeing our exit from crime-ridden, crumbling, corrupt, and tax-greedy Illinois. Tennesse is at the top of our list for our next, and likely last, home. Both of us watched Joker for the first time this month. We compared Gotham City to today’s Chicago.
Why should we stay here?
Wouldn’t it be great if we, as Tennessee residents, were there to welcome the White Sox to Nashville?
UPDATE August 28, 2023, 7:15pm EDT:
Thank you to Dan Proft of WIND-AM Chicago. He, along with Amy Jacobson, co-host Chicago’s Morning Answer–a show I Iisten to, either over the air, or by way of the podcast, nearly every weekday–for mentioning this post on the air today. Look for Proft’s take around the 9 minute mark.
Also, here’s an update, and I have a strong feeling there will be more than one for this blog entry. Chicago’s interim police superintendant, Fred Waller, in a press conference this afternoon, discussed what his public affairs callously called a “a shooting incident” on Friday night. It was a shooting. “We’re dispelling a lot of things,” Waller said. As for where the bullets originated, he added that “coming from outside [Guaranteed Rate Field] is something we’ve almost completely dispelled.”
Still, fans who have bought tickets to a Sox game, or are considering doing so, probably have a lot on their minds now, to say the least.
UPDATE August 29, 2023 4:20pm EDT:
This story keeps getting stranger. There was online chatter that one of the women who was shot had sneaked the gun inside Guaranteed Rate Field beneath her belly rolls. I mean, what kind of people make up stuff like that?
Well, they may not have to do so.
Here’s what longtime Chicago sports reporter, Peggy Kusinski just tweeted:
“As I reported on @ESPN1000 just now… the shooting at Guaranteed Rate Field during a #WhiteSox game was indeed an accidental discharge by one of the women “grazed” by the bullet. She reportedly snuck the gun in past metal detectors hiding it in the folds of her belly fat.”
As I reported on @ESPN1000 just now… the shooting at Guaranteed Rate Field during a #WhiteSox game was indeed an accidental discharge by one of the women “grazed” by the bullet. She reportedly snuck the gun in past metal detectors hiding it in the folds of her belly fat.
ESPN 1000 AM is the White Sox flagship radio station. It’s a credible source and Kusinski is a solid journalist.
If true, this news is a black mark for the White Sox fan base. What type of person brings a handgun to a baseball game? On the other hand, after the game, in a heavily hyped promotion, Vanilla Ice was to be the headliner of a “90s Night” concert. Were the women there for the Sox-Athletics game or for the postgame show? The White Sox cancelled the gig due to what they called “technical difficulties.” They lied. Shame on the White Sox. Police officers wanted to keep stadium lights on to look for evidence.
And how does a gun detection system miss a firearm hidden in belly rolls?
And what about the Chicago Police Department? Interim superintendent Waller said in a Monday press conference, “At one point in time it was requested as a precaution” to cancel the game. But the game played on. Who made that call to continue? The White Sox? The police? Mayor Brandon Johnson? The women who were shot are said to be teachers. Johnson is a product of the Chicago Teachers Union, for whom he was a longtime organizer, and Johnson is a former CPS teacher. Johnson’s political career is a creation of the CTU.
Without a doubt, I’ll have at least one more update.
Update August 29, 2023, 9:15pm EDT:
Second City Cop is hinting about the “graze wound” woman, that the injury may have been a power burn, is a Chicago Public Schools teacher.
UPDATE: A CPS teacher had the gun?
UPDATE: A CPS teacher with a suburban home address?
John Ruberry, a lifetime Chicago White Sox fan, blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.
Imagine if instead of serving as the governor of Illinois, Democrat J.B. Pritzker is an Uber driver. And Pritzker’s car is loaded with problems. The check engine, oil pressure, ABS, and TPMS warning lights are on.
What would be Pritzker’s fix?
Uber J.B. would simply ignore the problems by having his car professionally detailed, so his vehicle looks good, then he’d place electrical tape over the locations on the dashboard where each warning light is flashing.
Pritzker governs America’s sixth most populous state the same way–by ignoring the metaphorical warning lights facing the Land of Lincoln. Here at Da Tech Guy for years I’ve been railing Illinois’ big three problems–which are intertwined–and they are a massively underfunded public pension system, widespread government corruption, and declining population.
Now there is a fourth one, rampant theft and violent crime. Illinois’ largest city, Chicago, is still suffering from the highest murder rates since the 1990s. Carjackings are skyrocketing–in 2013 there were 344 reporting carjackings, last year the total was 1,674. Because so many shoplifting incidents aren’t reported, I don’t trust any theft figures. But the anecdotal evidence is alarming–shoplifting is soaring.
For years, liberals have, often blaming “corporate greed,” decried the many food deserts in big cities–and rural areas too. A food desert, if you are unfamiliar with the term, is an area without a nearby supermarket selling inexpensive groceries. Chicago, after some pushback from left-wing alderman because it is non-union, didn’t see its first Walmart open until 2006. Eventually there were eight Walmarts in Chicago, but shortly after the election of a far-left Democrat, Brandon Johnson, as mayor, Walmart announced it was closing four of those big box stores. In the press release explaining the reason for the shuttering of those Chicago stores, Walmart revealed “that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years.”
Also last week, multiple media outlets reported that Home Depot, Target, and yes, Walmart, have decried the drastic rise of “shrink,” that is, shoplifting, at its stores. Walmart’s CEO, John Furner, pointed his finger in the right direction about “shrink.”
“It’ll take communities stepping up and enforcing the law to be able to – to bring this issue under control,” Furner said.
While local law enforcement is not the responsibility of Illinois’ governor, Pritzker has never condemned Kim Foxx, the Soros-funded so-called prosecutor in Cook County. Her social worker approach to law enforcement–which Brandon Johnson also favors–is partly responsible for Chicago’s crime wave.
As for Pritzker, thru his ridiculously misnamed SAFE-T Act, the abolishment of cash bail–little or no bail is the current de facto practice of Foxx–will take effect statewide in less than a month.
Here’s my fix for the food desert problem: Hire more cops, have them arrest shoplifters and the criminals who fence their swag, prosecute them in a fair trial, and imprison them if found guilty for a few years. Such a surefire strategy will not only to protect the public and retailers, but it will serve as a deterrent to people considering a life of crime.
Simple and easy.
Illinois’ mainstream media needs to get on board and accurately report on food deserts. In a New York Times-length study by the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago’s NPR affiliate from earlier this month, only one sentence mentioned the real problem, albeit gently. “Grocery operators have pointed to crime and homelessness as reasons they’ve needed to invest more in security, driving up costs,” they reported, “according to Amanda Lai, a Chicago director of food industry practice for the consulting firm McMillan Doolittle.”
Yep, one sentence.
Meanwhile, with the warning lights flashing, J.B. Pritzker continues to drive Illinois into the ground, while pissing away $20 million to fight food deserts. In the short term there is no hope for a repeal of the SAFE-T Act, but that’s part of the cure that Illinois needs.
As Ronald Reagan said, “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.”
While he hasn’t yet devolved to the level of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, Brandon Johnson, the new leftist mayor of Chicago, certainly says some stupid things.
Worse, for Johnson that is, his moronic statements add arrows to the quivers of his critics, particularly snarky ones like the writers a the Hey Jackass site, and yes, people like me.
But 40 of the creeps were arrested, they were aged from 12 to 20. Yep, 12-years-old. Well, as it’s still summer vacation time in Chicago, at least Sunday wasn’t what my parents called a school night.
Speaking of schools, Johnson was the mayoral candidate of the far-left Chicago Teachers Union. He went from being a CTU teacher, to a CTU organizer, then on to being elected a Cook County commissioner. In that last post, Johnson still collected a $100,000 annual salary from the CTU.
The Chicago Teachers Union is a longtime apologist for the failures of Chicago’s youths, partly because they bear some responsibility for those failures, because Chicago’s schools educate children quite poorly.
Chicago is in for a bumpy ride.
Last week, while being questioned about the convenience store riot, oops, make that “large gathering,” Johnson scolded a reporter for calling the mayhem “mob action,” even though it is a legal term in state law.
“Respectfully, these large gatherings — these large gatherings — hang on a second. I promise you we have time to talk,” Johnson replied. He added, “It’s important that we speak of these dynamics in an appropriate way. This is not to obfuscate what has actually taken place. We have to be very careful when we use language to describe certain behavior. There’s history in this city. I mean, to refer to children as, like, ‘baby Al Capones’ is not appropriate.”
After the next youth riot, which the rioters call “teen takeovers,” I will probably use a headline here, or on my own blog, along the lines of “Baby Al Capones involved in yet another Chicago mob action.” Thanks for the material, Mr. Mayor! Keep ’em coming!
I’ve lived my whole life in the Chicago area, and the term “baby Al Capones” is a new one for me. As it is for Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara, who said in a YouTube video:
Nobody is renaming anybody little mini-Al Capones. But they certainly, in many cases, had the same, terrorizing effect that Al Capone had 100 years ago with these teen takeovers, where they think they can do whatever they want with no repercussions, no parental supervision and no accountability — specifically apparent by the mayor’s office in City Hall, who wants to excuse all of this bad behavior because Chicago has a past. So that means: Do whatever the hell you want apparently.
Indeed, it does.
Johnson has also called the teen takeovers “trends.” You know, a trend, like a new style of clothing.
Do you have your “riot chic” duds yet? Don’t toss out your COVID masks! They’re back in style!
In the last Chicago riot, a much larger one which happened in April, two weeks after Johnson’s victory over a law-and-order moderate Democrat in a runoff election, Johnson said, “It is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”
Hey teens! If you don’t want to be demonized, don’t act demonically.
Johnson dismissed the riot, where at least two people were brutally beaten, by saying that sometimes kids make “silly decisions.”
The mayor, who is expected to name a new police commissioner this week, campaigned on a “holistic” approach to fighting crime.
The first attempt at holistic crimefighting in Chicago was tried over Memorial Day weekend with the introduction of yellow-donned civilian “peacekeepers.” But one of them, an ex-con, joined in as a mob, uh, make that “large gathering,” beat and robbed a man.
After the violent attack, the accused removed his yellow peacekeeper vest, his version, I guess, of giving two weeks’ notice.
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