Here’s a list of great flops in recent times. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.
Here we go.
Trump impeachment. Battlefield Earth movie. The XFL. (Yes, a revival is planned.) Jussie Smollett’s hate crime. Joe Walsh’s Republican primary challenge against Trump, as well as those of William Weld and Mark Sanford. New Coke. Cop Rock TV show. Watermelon-flavored Oreos. Heaven’s Gate movie. Bernie Madoff. Jar Jar Binks. The Cleveland Browns firing Bill Belichick. ESPN becoming woke. Theresa May’s call for a snap parliamentary election in 2017. Cheetos lip balm. Paris Hilton. The Big Ten conference inviting Rutgers to join. Anything related to Anna Nicole Smith. Mars Needs Moms movie. Manimal TV show. Jeremy Corbin’s term as head of the Labour Party. Pontiac Aztek. The San Diego Chargers move to Los Angeles. Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign, “I was born to be in it.” Google Glass. CNN’s decision to become the impeachment network. Rosie O’Donnell on The View. Michael Avenatti’s presidential run. Enron. Motorola Rokr phone. (I was given one of these by my employer at the time. It was truly a dreadful device.) Heinz purple ketchup.
Now some of these debacles can also double as hoaxes, such as the “racist assault on Smollett. And of course the impeachment of Trump, which of course is stumbling along despite the lack of evidence that a crime was committed.
Witch-hunter in chief in the House, Adam Schiff, dabbles in screenplay writing. Perhaps a Schiff-scripted movie might make it on a future list.
“Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints,” Mick Jagger first sang in 1968. The late 1960s were a period when many people believed that society, not individuals, was responsbible for crimes. There was a predictable backlash which led to the “Get Tough on Crime” movement that benefitted the political careers of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and countless other politicians. In 2016, Donald Trump once referred to himself as “the law and order candidate.” He should have stayed with that meme, in my opinion.
Clearly, at least in America’s big cities, the law enforcement philosophic pendulum is swinging back to the liberals. A big part of the reason is the left-wing political monoculture in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco. The Democrats are the only effective political force in these places, and the two-party structure, such as it is, consists of the left and the far-left. It was the far-left, aided by the uninformed who only vote for candidates with “D” next to their names, who elected Kim Foxx the state’s attorney in Cook County, Illinois, where I live, as well as Larry Krasner as district attorney of Philadelphia, Rachael Rollins as district attorney in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, which is dominated by Boston, and earlier this month, Chesa Boudin as San Francisco’s district attorney.
Boudin takes us back to the 1960s. You probably haven’t heard of his parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin. Both were members of the terrorist group the Weather Underground, which was founded in 1969. Dad is serving what is effectively a life sentence for murder for his role in a deadly 1981 suburban New York Brinks truck robbery, done in conjunction with the Black Liberation Army, one that saw a security guard and two Nyack police officers shot to death. One of those slain cops was the only African-American on the Nyack force. Mom was released from prison in 2003, she is now an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Getaway cars for the heist were rented using personal information taken from customers who shopped at a New York boutique, Broadway Baby. The manager of that store, using a phony name, was Bernardine Dorhn. She was also a member of the Weather Underground but was never charged in Brinks case.
Since Gilbert and Kathy Boudin were unable to raise Chesa, who was a toddler at the time of the heist, they chose their radical pals, Dohrn and her partner, Bill Ayers, who of course was another Weather Underground member, as his guardians. Dohrn and Ayers’ home in Chicago is where Barack Obama began his political career in 1995. Ayers and Dorhn, now retired professors, are rarely mentioned in the generally sympathetic mainstream media reports about Chesa. As for that younger Boudin, he did well by attending an elite private school, then Yale, then Oxford. Prior to becoming a public defender in San Francisco, Boudin worked as a translator for the Venezuelan government at the time Hugo Chavez was running that once-prosperous nation into the ground.
Next year voters in California will vote on an initiative to eliminate cash bail there. Boudin doesn’t want to wait that long. The district attorney-elect told NPR last week that his first act in office will be to tell his prosecutors never to ask for cash bail, “Because we shouldn’t be putting a price tag on freedom, because we shouldn’t be determining incarceration based on wealth, and it’s what I intend to implement as policy on day one.” In place of prison time, Boudin, with victims’ consent, supports something called “restorative justice,” even in cases involving murder, kidnapping, and rape.
Not surprisingly, the local police union opposed Boudin in the election, spending $700,000 and calling him “the No. 1 choice of criminals and gang members.” Boudin has called for the prosecution of cops and ICE officials for, wait for it, doing their jobs.
Bernie Sanders endorsed Boudin in the DA race.
We are immensely proud to receive the endorsement of Senator @BernieSanders.
Bernie has devoted his life to standing up for overlooked & underserved ppl in America, & understands the dysfunction of our current criminal justice system.
Back in Cook County, Illinois, where Boudin was raised, Kim Foxx is the top law enforcement official. She endorsed Chesa, as did those leftist district attorneys in Philadelphia and Boston. Nationally Foxx is best known for her bizarre–unless you are a leftist–decision to drop all of Jussie Smollett’s charges involving staging the phony “racist” attack on him in Chicago earlier this year. But there is more to dislike. The Illinois threshold for charging shoplifters with a felony is stealing items worth $300. Foxx, with the snap of her fingers, raised it to $1,000. Not surprisingly, retail theft is on the rise in Chicago. Who pays? The store owners? Not exactly. To recoup their losses, prices for their unstolen merchandise goes up. So honest people suffer. Now there are reports of roving bands of shoplifters in Chicago. Retail theft can be a career choice, it seems. Presumably the swiped goods are resold by these bandits on the black market, at a cheap price, undercutting the sales of legitimate merchants. And Chicago doesn’t collect its whopping 10 percent sales tax on these transactions. Crime is indeed expensive. Yet for some people it pays.
In her video regarding announcing her run for reelection in 2020, Foxx admitted she botched the Smollett case, but she also attacked Chicago’s police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, which in a spring protest outside of her office called on her to resign. In a July letter to Foxx, the FOP cited that a “deep mistrust now exists between your office and ours. We no longer believe that your office will treat our members fairly either in the arrests they make or when they are victims of crimes.”
It appears that the Age of Criminals, at least in some big cities and their inner suburbs, is upon us. Supporting law abiding folks are the cops. Leftist prosecutors are on the other side.
While Da Tech Guy was technical hiatus, former Illinois Republican congressman Joe Walsh announced his presidential run, which is why I’m only now weighing in.
I’ve had mixed feelings over the years on Walsh, who was part of the GOP Tea Party wave in 2010 but was essentially gerrymandered out of office by Illinois Democratic Party boss Michael Madigan. His triumph, without any Illinois Republican Party financial support over Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean was a shocker, many people viewed his chances of winning as dismal because of a then-ongoing child support dispute with his ex-wife and a lawsuit, since settled, from his onetime campaign manager over fees he said were owed to him.
The only positive thing I heard during that 2010 race about Walsh was from my wife. She was thoroughly impressed by a speech he gave at a Tea Party event where I live, Morton Grove, Illinois. She predicted, “He’s going to win.”
Always listen to your spouse.
During his single term in Congress, for the most part I supported Walsh. I met him at a different Tea Party event and I was impressed that he was familiar with my blog, Marathon Pundit, and what I wrote about him. Still, I always thought he was a bit nutty. But that goes for many politicians of course.
Walsh seemingly found his place in 2013 after when Chicago conservative talk radio station WIND-AM hired him for its coveted afternoon drive-time slot. Early on his show was enjoyable and informative–regularly trashing President Obama on just about everything, including the economy. Salem Radio Network picked up his show for national distribution in 2017, while he was a third-tier talker, his future was still bright.
Then something snapped within Joe. If you are familiar with the 1970s movie, Network, like the mentally unbalanced TV anchorman Howard Beale, Walsh changed. Beale went from decrying big government and big business every night to preaching that the latter wasn’t really bad after all. Then Beale’s ratings dropped. As for Walsh, who was never completely on the Trump Train, earlier this year he began to sprinkle his program with bits of criticism of Trump–which quickly became a flood. I tuned out and so did many of my friends. How many others bailed? I dunno. WIND-AM stopped subscribing to Nielsen in 2016. I listen to other radio shows besides right-wing talkers, it’s a good idea to see what the other side is up to. But like Beale’s later performances, I felt I was being preached at by Walsh, not spoken to. Not fun. So on my way home from work I’d connect my iPod and listen to Mark Levin’s podcasts instead.
Since his announcement, Walsh has been struggling to get noticed, just as the other Republican challengers again Trump have. Those other candidates are another nut-job, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, and former Massachusetts governor William Weld, the vice presidential candidate in 2016 on the Libertarian ticket.
Presumably because last week President Trump made his first appearance in Chicago since his election–not surprisingly he trashed the city–Fox 32 Chicago’s Mike Flannery interviewed him this weekend on his Flannery Fired Up program. Playing devil’s advocate, Flannery mentioned the “booming economy” and Friday’s strong jobs report, Walsh countered on the economy, “It was booming under Obama.” Which one is true, Joe? What you said this weekend about Obama, or your unilateral condemnations of Obama as president, including of course on the economy?
No one should take Walsh seriously as a presidential candidate.
And then there is this Tweet.
Unemployment ticks up to 9.2% in June. RT if you think President Obama is failing the American people on jobs & the economy.
Actually, it’s better to have the economy in the care of the American people, as far away as possible from the destructive hands of government. Unlike Obama, Trump understands this. https://t.co/0QOMxXFEDe
But we will still be hearing from Walsh every now and then; the mainstream media, which mocked him for years, fell in love with Walsh after he announced his campaign against Trump, I mean that he is running for president. With the anti-Trump media it’s all about hating the president.
I heard that one of President Trump’s lawyers sent the House a letter which basically says “hell naw we ain’t playing your impeachment inquiry games.” I read only part of the letter, but it really must be spicy, because a lot of anti-Trump partisans are wailing about it.
When this whole thing started, someone on Twitter offered this as an exclusive photo of the anonymous “whistle-blower.”
I shared it and got a lot of laughs, but the thing is this: it is probable that Donald Trump set this soap opera into motion and did so on purpose. What follows is my theory on how it went down.
Last week, it was reported that Secretary of State Pompeo was sitting in on the call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky.
After the call – or maybe before – the president tells Pompeo to get one of the latter’s people to drop some bait about the call in the presence of the right person — someone who is likely to spill the beans to the Democratic Party honchos.
This gets done and thus is born the “whistle-blower,” who so is excited about it that she doesn’t bother with the whistle-blower procedure. Instead, she runs to Congress in order pass the bait along to the other fish — especially to Adam Schiff — and they, of course, swallow it. What about the change to the whistle-blower statute regarding first-hand information? Trump changed that.
Why would President Trump do this? Simple. He knows that the Democrats have been after him since he announced his candidacy; they pre-conjured a reason for his impeachment, for Heaven’s sake. Therefore, he is forcing an impeachment at the time of his choosing rather than theirs.
I don’t think the Democrats wanted to begin the procedure this long before the 2020 presidential election. Remember that Nancy Pelosi didn’t want this to happen right now; she comprehends strategy even if it’s a dim vestige of comprehension. But her caucus isn’t even that bright. They want Trump gone NOW and Pelosi had to do what they wanted.
And President Trump knew that this is how it would probably go.
So, voila! The impeachment inquiry was conjured, appeasing Pelosi’s idiot caucus, without messing up the intended timeline. She wants to file formal articles of impeachment months from now, hoping that the procedure will last until the time of the election, causing the president to lose. Therefore, it is in Donald Trump’s best interest to have them do it as soon as possible.
What the Democrats hope is this: that a goodly chunk of their supporters don’t know that an impeachment inquiry means jack squat and that the president is not required to participate in it.
The wailers are wailing mostly about the language of the letter. It’s in plan, blunt English rather than in lawyer-ese. Probably dictated by the non-lawyer who sits in the Oval Office. Good.
Update: the 1st Instalanche at the new host. Hi all, nice to see you here, hope you like the faster load speed and the similar design, we’re still moving posts over but we’re going full speed, take a peek around, learn about the new gender of “traitor”, notice the Pence pivot on impeachment, and if you have an extra buck or two consider kicking into my Great Niece’s gofundme campaign as she was made homeless and lost everything in an IDE fueled suicide that took our the condo building that she lived at (full details here)
