My state is a solid blue state, but it wasn’t always that way.
In the 20th century, only twice, in 1912 and 1916, Illinois failed to back the presidential winner in the general election.
The Land of Lincoln, the home of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, began its slide to the left in 1988, when George H.W. Bush won Illinois by just 95,000 votes in his blowout win, nationally that is, over Michael Dukakis. Democrat gerrymandering and feckless leadership from the state GOP have demoralized Illinois conservatives. Real conservatives, that is, not the country club phonies who are embarrassed by Donald Trump.
Illinois has now gone hard left, thanks to decades of gerrymandering. At the top of the heap is likely 2028 presidential candidate, J.B. Pritzker, who is nearly halfway into his second term as governor.
To embellish his woke credentials for his presidential run, Pritzker signed into law and championed the SAFE-T Act, which abolishes cash bail in Illinois. It’s been in effect for nine months. The numbers are still coming in, but at least in Chicago, other than a slight dip in murders, violent crime is up.
Still, criminals manage to get caught and convicted in Illinois, despite the presence until December of a George Soros-funded so-called prosecutor, Kim Foxx, in the state’s largest county, Cook.
But some of those unlucky Illinois crooks soon may not soon be officially known as “felons,” “offenders,” or “convicts” or “ex-cons,” If it’s not on his desk already, it soon will be, but Illinois House Bill 4409 will classify participants in the Adult Redeploy Illinois program as “justice-impacted individuals.”
To be fair, not all convicted criminals in the state will be referred to as such if Pritzker signs HB 4409 into law, but considering that the billionaire governor has proven to be cautious about being out-woked, look for all lawbreakers to be referred to be officially classified as such in that sanitized, Orwellian phrase.
Conservatives and centrists, who, despite Democratic dominance in in the Land of Lincoln, still make up a majority in this state, have two surefire ways to fight back.
The other method of attack is to refer to criminals, when a progressive is in earshot or likely to read a social media post, as “justice-impacted individuals.” Leftists can’t process the wrongheadedness of their political beliefs, such as men being able to give birth, and they despise ridicule.
Believers in common sense, you have your assignment. Think of yourselves as Groucho Marx and the leftist in front of you as the kind of pompous fool the legendary comedian regularly humiliated.
With some laughs, we might be able turn Illinois, even slightly, to the right direction.
Cook County, Illinois, America’s second-most populous county, has suffered under seven-and-a-half years of a pro-criminal so-called prosecutor, state’s attorney Kim Foxx.
Jussie Smollet’s pal–who is a George Soros-funded Democrat–apparently doesn’t want to leave office quietly. Foxx, who thankfully decided not to run for a third term.
Foxx is considering adopting a policy of not prosecuting motorists who are pulled over for moving violations, thinks like speeding and driving with expired license plates, if they are found with narcotics or illegally possessing guns.
I’ve repeatedly criticized Foxx on this blog. Among her most egregious examples of prosecutorial malfeasance is her policy of ignoring the Illinois threshold for felony theft of $300. She raised it to $1,000. A second standout of idiocy was her decision, since reversed, not to charge participants in a wild west style Chicago gunfight because they were engaged in “mutual combat.”
For decades, liberals and leftists in Illinois have said that most deadly violence in the Prairie State is caused by guns. After every mass shooting–the latest one happened last night on Chicago’s West Side–libs will decry the latest instance of “gun violence.” Of course, these guns don’t fire themselves. It’s people violence. And playing along with the progressives’ word games, the next logical step of course is more gun laws, or better yet, they believe, a ban on public ownership of firearms.
The reaction to Foxx’s no-charges suggestion regarding guns and drugs found during traffic stops has been mostly, but not exclusively, negative.
The media-shy Foxx–I prefer to call her a coward–directed her office issue a statement defending her foolish idea.
“Decades of data demonstrate that these stops do not enhance public safety,” it reads. “Instead, they perpetuate a cycle of mistrust and fear, especially in under-resourced communities. This draft policy is a crucial step towards rebuilding that trust.”
What data? Where? When?
And “rebuilding that trust” means not enforcing gun laws?
A Chicago alderperson, Sylvana Tabares, issued a commonsense retort against Foxx’s proposal. “It strips officers of an essential tool to get illegal guns off our streets,” Tabares said. “Residents are demanding we do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and make their neighborhoods safe. This does the opposite.”
The Republican nominee for Cook County’s state’s attorney, Robert Fioretti, says if Foxx’s no-charges- on-guns-and-drugs-found-in-traffic-stops policy is enacted, he’ll reverse it. The Democratic candidate, Eileen O’Neill Burke, hasn’t commented on Foxx’s proposal. However, O’Neill Burke–who I voted for in the Democratic Primary over a Foxx-wannabe–campaigned on reversing returning Cook County to the $300 threshold for prosecuting felony theft. I suspect EOB is against Foxx’s proposal.
Soon to be ex-State’s Attorney @KimFoxx is drafting a blanket policy to deny ALL charges or ANY crime if it was discovered during a traffic stop. Below is my statement: pic.twitter.com/e8Oe2DYFJR
Meanwhile, last week Cook County’s sheriff, the weaselly Tom Dart, also a Democrat, in statement suggested that there could be over 80,000 Illinoisans who have had their Firearm Owners Identification Cards revoked who still possess guns. Dart, at least in regard to Cook County, says he needs more money to track down these criminals. Cook County Jail, which Dart is in charge of, has seen a dramatic drop in inmates because of Illinois’ pro-criminal no-cash bail SAFE-T Act, but has not laid off any guards. I know, that’s because of union contracts.
When are the next round of negotiations for those jail guards’ contracts?
Now back to guns. I’m going to state the obvious. Before suggesting new firearm laws, let’s first enforce the existing ones.
John Ruberry regularly blogs from Cook County at Marathon Pundit.
If you only have a minute and you want to know, in a nutshell, what the Netflix adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel from 1998, A Man in Full, is all about, here it is: The lead character, Atlanta businessman Charlie Croker, is Donald Trump–orange hair and all. Then throw in elements of the George Floyd and Rodney King stories and add an even more shocking ending than the one in Boogie Nights.
Earlier this month, Netflix started streaming the six-episode series, which stars Jeff Daniels and Diane Lane.
Wolfe, who is my favorite writer, after a two-decade career in journalism, made a smooth transition into fiction with his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities. It encapsulates the boom years of 1980s–along with the mayhem of pre-Rudy Giuliani New York City. Three years later, the film version was released. It is godawful, starting with the miscasting of Tom Hanks in the lead role as “the Master of the Universe,” Sylvester McCoy. After I suffered through the movie, I said to myself, Vanities is a mini-series not a two-hour movie.
I had hopes, misguided ones it turns out, that A Man in Full would be better, because it is a mini-series. Adding to my anticipation was Netflix streaming last year the insightful documentary, Radical Wolfe.
As A Man in Full begins, Charlie Croker (Daniels) is celebrating his 60th birthday at a party with Shania Twain entertaining his friends, family, and business associates. Two of those guests are executives from PlannersBanc, his principal lender, Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphrey) and Harry Zale (Bill Camp). While it appears that Croker is an Atlanta version of a Master of the Universe, he’s broke–Charlie owes PlannersBanc $600 million. He’s overextended with other lenders too. Peepgrass and Zale want to carve up Croker’s empire, starting with his quail hunting plantation and his corporate jet. A rescue is offered by the mayor of Atlanta, Wes Jordan (William Jackson Harper), who is campaigning for reelection, and Croker’s attorney, Roger White (Aml Ameen). But to save his neck, Croker will have to betray his former Georgia Tech football teammate, Norman Bagovitch (John Lacy), who is running against Jordan.
Bagovitch–wait for it–decries the status of the white male in his campaign. Jordan is Black.
David E. Kelley wrote the script, and he should be ashamed. No serious candidate for public office would campaign on such bigoted idiocy. And in Atlanta?!? Why does Kelley insult his audience?
Oh yeah, he wants to demonize Trump. Orange Croker Bad. Oops, I mean Orange Man Bad.
Joyce Newman (Lucy Liu) is an alleged victim of a sexual assault from Bagovitch. In the book, well, let’s just say there is fear of a race riot because of the racial angle of that alleged rape.
Wolfe, brilliantly in my opinion, centered much of his plot on racial contrast and conflict, but also on Croker being an anachronism. The series is set in 2024, but events in the book take place a quarter of a century earlier. Croker, nicknamed the 60 Minute Man because he starred on offense and defense for Georgia Tech, played a lead role for a national championship Yellowjackets team, at a time when major college sports teams in the South were not integrated. Croker came of age just as the civil rights protests were picking up steam, and when Jim Crow laws were still in force in Georgia and other southern states. The world changed, but Croker, not so much. Sure, of course Croker in the novel knew blacks had equal rights, but they still belonged– and I’m not endorsing his sentiment–“in their place.”
Kelley, and the directors, eliminates that angle by turning Croker into Trump. He even does away with Charlie’s redemption in Wolfe’s novel.
There’s even a climate change dig included in the series. I mean, why not?
As Croker, Daniels, who is usually very good, is an embarrassment, beginning with his overwrought Foghorn Leghorn southern accent and his Trump-sized abdominal paunch. On the other hand, Diane Lane, as Charlie’s first wife, shines. I had the pleasure of seeing her at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth a decade ago.
Wolfe’s novel is over 700 pages long, so it’s understandable that some storylines are condensed.
For instance, Conrad Hensley in the book is the child of worthless white hippies who, in spite of them, still manages to develop a strong moral compass. He works for Croker Foods in the East Bay area of California Hensley’s life, like Charlie’s, collapses. He ends up on the wrong side of the law after he violently tries to retrieve his towed car. By the way, anyone who has had his car towed and is forced to pay usurious fees to retrieve it, will sympathize with Hensley. In the series Hensley (Jan Michael Hill) is Black, and well, I already mentioned Rodney King and George Floyd.
The subplot with Peepgrass and Martha Croker remains, with the Boogie Nights twist added. If you crave more details on that, click on this Daily Mail link.
Oh, the Crokers’ son, Wally (Evan Roe), sure looks a lot like Barron Trump in the series.
Astonishingly, Trump-hating Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis doesn’t appear here. Maybe she was on a cruise with Nathan Wade during filming.
I guess I needed to suffer for some forgotten sins, because I endured all six episodes of A Man in Full. Of the other Netflix series that I punished myself with, in full, only The Pentaverate and Vikings: Valhalla were worse.
On the flipside, the cinematography for A Man in Full is sharp–Atlanta never looked so good. The soundtrack, compiled by Craig DeLeon, is spectacular, it’s as splendid as the best work of T-Bone Burnett. Keep an eye on DeLeon.
Wolfe, who died in 2018, didn’t like The Bonfire of the Vanities film. I don’t think he’d care for the series based on A Man in Full either.
I hated it.
A Man in Full is currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for violence, foul language, sex, and nudity.
In terms of numbers and in geographic reach, America is possibly suffering from its worse outbreak of anti-Semitism ever. I’m referring of course to the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests at many colleges. Many of these “spontaneous” events are illegal encampments filled with similar tents, exact-copy signs, that are populated with angry students and other interlopers chanting the same slogans.
Fortunately, for now at least, the worst outrages at these hate rallies are isolated incidents.
Last month, a protester at George Washington University held a sign with a Palestinian flag and “the final solution.” At Columbia, a protest leader, the pronoun challenged Khymani James, was banned from campus after a video surfaced where, James declared, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
Can you imagine the uproar–it would be a well-deserved one–if someone screamed, “Go back to Africa” to Black protesters? The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division would be there at Navy Seals speed.
The head of the Department of Justice is Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. When the situation fits, he likes to remind people that he is Jewish and had two members of his family perish in the Holocaust.
Last year, when questioned about the infamous FBI memo that suggested Catholics who favor traditional Latin mass services could connected to “the far-right white nationalist movement,” Garland responded emotionally. “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous,” he said, “so absurd.”
In March, in an address to the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now Summit, Garland was more specific about his family and the Holocaust.
“My family fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe at the start of the 20th century,” he said. “My grandmother, who was one of five children born in what is now Belarus, made it to the United States, as did two of her siblings.”
“The other two did not,” the AG continued. “They were killed in the Holocaust.”
Oh yeah, Belarus, the same place the hater at Columbia said, along with Poland, Jews should return to.
Garland is a native of Lincolnwood, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. He graduated–as class valedictorian-from Niles West High School in nearby Skokie. It was in Skokie, several years after Garland’s graduation, where Neo-Nazis attempted to march. Thousands of Holocaust survivors lived in Skokie at the time; Garland almost certainly was classmates with children of survivors of the Shoah.
Why hasn’t Garland specifically and forcefully spoken out against the anti-Semitism at these pro-Hamas protests? His boss, President Joe Biden, hasn’t either, of course.
When the time is right–or better, when the politics are right–Garland speaks out against anti-Semitism.
But is Garland even running the Justice Department? In the May 3rd Chicago Way podcast hosted by John Kass, the great Charles Lipson, a professor emeritus of political science from the University Chicago, had this to say about Garland: “The attorney general’s office right now is being running by a woman named Lisa Monaco, she’s the number two-person, Merrick Garland’s not doing anything.”
Well, he can do something now. Garland can unequivocally denounce the anti-Semitic protests at college campuses and the Biden administration’s weak response to them.
And then resign.
It’s up to Garland to convince me that he’s not a coward.
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