Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Under the Fedora: Goals, No Debate on this, Protesting the Geek Prom, Barr None, Redsox vs Miami Heat advantage Sox

Posted: April 27, 2024 by datechguy in baseball, culture, education, elections, media, nba, politics, Sports, under the fedora
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Other than the Professional activists who are being paid to upend universities I would be real money that the girls at the “Free Palestine” protests are there for status and self esteem and the guys are there in the hopes of getting laid.

In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if more than one guy at these “camps” are taking liberties that they shouldn’t and the ladies who are being taken advantage of are told not to talk about it, complain about it or report it for the sake of the cause.

I don’t care what Radio host he said it to does anyone really believe Joe Biden circa 2024 is going to take a stage opposite of Donald Trump?

Cripes they don’t even let him walk to the airplane or helicopter without being surrounded for fear of people seeing how fragile he is and you’re going to put him in front of Trump who will ask Biden before millions of eyes how heavily did they have to drug you up to get you to this podium?

If they thought Biden could stand up to Trump they wouldn’t have spent the last year trying to jail him.

The White House Correspondents dinner is going on as I type. The folks at the Lincoln Project are suggesting it’s going to be a big win for Biden. Given the hundreds of protestors outside making trouble, all leftists btw, I think this is another example of redefining words.

The real irony is just about all the journalists in their spend most of their time whitewashing the crimes both of Hamas and the protestors themselves, but every revolution eventually eats their own allies.

As you might have heard Bill Barr who did his level best to ignore and enable the steal of 2020 by inaction endorsed Donald Trump for 2024 on the grounds that whatever he might think of Trump, Joe Biden and the Democrats are an actual threat to freedom.

Trump being Trump accepted the endorsement listing all the names that he has called Barr and stated from now on the label “lethargic” will be removed from the list.

CNN hoped to pounce on this but Barr just laughed and when pressed listed all the ways that freedoms are being threatened by the Biden Administration rules that were not being done under Trump.

That’s how bad this administration has been, they’ve got Bill Barr doubling down on an endorsement of Trump.

Finally I was out with a devout young friend of mine who was once my boss. He was part of the layoff at my place but because he is a hard worker and very talented he quickly found another job at a better pay and has by that hard work advanced himself admirably.

We went to Buffalo Wild wins and caught the Celtics vs Heat game and the end of the Red Sox Cubs game while we were at it. As I watched the finish of the Redsox game which carried into the 2nd quarter of the Celtics playoff game I saw something I had never seen before.

The Celtics have a spectacular defense and put on a show during the first quarter of the game. How much of a show? It took the NBA’s Miami heat until 2-3 minutes into the 2nd quarter before they managed to outscore the Boston Red Sox who put up 17 against the Cubs today.

If the Celtics play this kind of defense during the rest of this playoff run I don’t see how any team beat them. Bill Russell would have been proud of them.

The Real Culture War Elite Violent Campus Anti-Semites and their Faculty Enables vs my “White Privileged” Dad.

Posted: April 24, 2024 by datechguy in culture, education, education, elections, politics
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Lieutenant Harold Kaminsky: [to Captain John Earle, who demanded confirmation before alerting anyone when informed of a sub sighting in the restricted zone] You wanted confirmation, Captain? [Pointing to the Pearl Harbor fleet aflame] Take a look! There’s your confirmation!

Tora Tora Tora 1970

I found myself thinking of my father yesterday and realizing that the people who are currently occupying colleges and screaming for the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews would have defined him as having “White Privilege”.

Well he certainly was white (although many in society didn’t consider the children of Sicilian immigrants white and he certainly was loaded with privilege his entire life.

  • He had the privilege of being born to a family of 9 from Parents who came from Sicily with nothing
  • He had the privilege of leaving school at 13 to work full time in the paper mills to help support a family that while having a little bit of land was dead poor.
  • He had the privilege of working through the shutdowns of the plant to clean out the vats for extra money in an age when there was no such thing as “welfare”.
  • He had the privilege to spend years in the Pacific on an Ammunition ship knowing it would take but a single hit for his life to end it his 20’s.
  • He had the privilege after the war of running a bar and restaurant in a town that didn’t like Italians.
  • He had the privilege of enduring gunshots fired at his house and business for being an Italian businessman in the wrong town, of being jumped and in one instance run over for daring to carry on and not pay protection.
  • He had the privilege of seeing his wife and mother of his four children at the time caught in an explosion at his place, being badly burned but somehow surviving to eventually give birth to a fifth child.
  • He had the privilege of using his skills as a carpenter to build the house where he moved his family to and eventually build next door to his mother-in-law after her husband died to take care of her.
  • He had the privilege of having her move in with her and devoting himself full time to her welfare when she was too sick to live in her house next door.
  • And he had the privilege of after a lifetime of labor to die just after retirement at 65 before he ever received his first social security check.

But the biggest privilege he had was being brought up in a faithful Catholic house, marrying a faithful Catholic wife and during all that time of unremitting labor and danger thanking God for all the blessings he had. Always sharing what he had with strangers in need and never complaining about his lot, at least not in the 23 years that I shared a house with him.

Yet in contrast we see people attending elite universities, people who have rarely if ever had to struggle, who would be considered part of the 1% not just of this nation but of all human history abusing that advantage to gain an elite education, flouting the law and terrorizing their fellow students whose primary crime is to belong to a race that has survived thousands years of various attempts to exterminate them.

I’ll wager these pampered fools never had “no” said to them in their lives. They wouldn’t have lasted 15 minutes in the great depression let alone on the battlefields of World War 2 in the world where my dad and millions like him bore the “privilege” of responsibility. They’ve not builders they’re destroyers.

Even worse the “adults” in the room are encouraging them to continue such behavior and at the highest levels of Government people holding power do little or nothing out of fear that enforcing the law might cost them votes come November.

In my fathers day they would have been quickly arrested and subject to the full penalties of the law and in states like Florida where sanity still rules they are, which is why you aren’t seeing Campus takeovers and bridges blocked, because people protest within the boundaries of the laws and the adults in charge make sure that if they cross the line between exercising their rights and abusing the rights of others, they suffer the consequences.

These kids never faced the consequences of their actions. Now all of us get have the “privilege” of doing so.

Media malpractice on the Dexter Reed police shooting

Posted: April 14, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Dexter Reed Chicago Police mugshot. Source: Chicago City Wire.

By John Ruberry

On his Prime Time show last Thursday, Jesse Watters, nailed it when he excoriated the mainstream media over headlines used to describe the deadly shooting of Dexter Reed by a Chicago Police tactical squad last month.  Reed was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, which in Illinois, is a legitimate reason for police to pull a driver over. 

A Chicago police officer asked Reed to roll down his front windows, which initially he did, but then he rolled them up, he ignored demands to get out of his SUV, then he fired his gun eleven times, wounding one cop.

Headlines like these, Watters reported, were used about the Reed shooting:

“Black man dead on Chicago street after cops fired nearly 100 bullets.” 

“Police fired 96 shots in 41 seconds killing Black man during traffic stop.”

“Deadly Chicago traffic stop where police fired 96 shots raises serious questions about use of force.”

Watters points out that deep in the story the “journalists” mention that Reed shot as the cops first. 

But the media knows that often users only look at headlines of stories as they appear on their smartphones. They don’t bother to read the stores that accompany these headlines, or they are blocked by paywalls. 

The mainstream media doesn’t want to report the news–it wants to advance a left-wing agenda. Foremost on their agenda is to re-elect Joe Biden so the man who sends mean Tweets, Donald Trump, doesn’t return to the White House. The uproar over the police killing of George Floyd pushed the frail Joe Biden past the finish line in 2020. The media is hoping, with Reed, that history repeats and a new backlash can drag an ever-frailer Biden to victory.

The media, both local and national, is borrowing a page from the Trayvon Martin shooting, by using old photographs of him, of when he was younger and well, cuter. The Chicago media, in their stories, used high school photos of Reed, who was 26 when he was killed.

Chicago’s most-read newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, have a general policy, instituted in 2021 against using mugshots in stories. Of course, they both made an exception in the case of Donald Trump. The Chicago City Wire, derided as a “fake” newspaper by Chicago’s self-appointed media elite, has no such rule, so it published Reed’s mug shot.

That’s not all. The City Wire reports that was Reed arrested twice in 2023. The first bust was for retail theft, the second was for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.

The City Wire also revealed that Reed, who once worked as a security guard, received a Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loan of $20,832 for his business that consisted of “all other support activities for transportation.”

Thousands of very suspicious PPP loans were issued to Chicagoans during the COVID pandemic, particularly in impoverished areas not known as hubs for business activity, including West Garfield Park, where Reed lived.

Sam Charles of the Trib managed to do some insightful reporting today when he revealed that Reed was shot in 2021.

“I’m physically disabled and mentally unstable with PTSD, short-term memory loss, slurred speech, drop foot in one of my legs, blindness in one eye, shoulder/arm hard to move, weakness and/or sensitivity,” Reed, who was 26 when he was killed last month, wrote in an August 2023 court filing. “With all these medical conditions it has been hard for me to work and/or do certain things.”

Well, if Reed was truthful in that filing, then I have a question: Why did Reed–and as we know, he was arrested for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon last year–have a gun? And where did he get the firearm?

Chicago has among the toughest gun laws in America.

And of course, Reed, despite his troubles, should have known want what to do when police officers pulled him over.

On Thursday’s Chicago’s Morning Answer show with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson on WIND-AM, John Garrido, a former CPD lieutenant, told the hosts, “This incident, like so many other ones, could have easily been avoided,” Garrido explained, “all [Reed] had to do was comply. All he had to do was roll the window down, open the door, get out of the car, and he would live another day to tell stories about how the police somehow violated his rights.”

Garrido had more to say about Reed. “He was in court–or supposed to be in court–two weeks prior to this incident.” The former cop theorized that Reed possibly was afraid if he was caught by the CPD tactical squad with a weapon, one that he was not supposed to have, that he could have been sent to jail.

Clearly, there is more to learn–and report–about the Reed death. But it appears that the mainstream media cares more about one thing–advancing their left-wing narrative.

As for the Tribune and the Sun-Times–as well as national outlets–why not reach out to someone like Garrido when reporting on Reed and similar police stories?

Note: Proft says he is a principal of Local Government Information Services, which publishes the Chicago City Wire and other local publications.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson asks, “Who expected me to defeat white supremacy in one year?”

Posted: April 7, 2024 by John Ruberry in business, crime, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Brandon Johnson

By John Ruberry

Chicago has a nasty mess on its hands with Brandon Johnson as mayor.

Crime rates remain high compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

It’s common for big city mayors to claim that crime is declining, but they usually look back only a year for comparison numbers and then declare, “You see!” However, in March, the murder total in Chicago exceeded the killings in March of last year–by 28 percent. 

Johnson suffered a major political loss last month. His Bring Chicago Home referendum, which would have raised the real estate on high-end property transactions, was defeated. Funds from that tax hike would have been used to battle homelessness, although Johnson and other key supporters of BCH provided no details on how that money would be spent.  Supporters of BCH, utilizing a class warfare tactics, dubbed it a “mansion tax.”

When commenting on the defeat of Bring Chicago Home, Johnson all but blamed supporters of former president Donald Trump. But in the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won all 50 Chicago wards, with Trump collecting a meager 15 percent of the vote in Chicago. Sorry, Jussie Smollett, but Chicago is not MAGA Country.

Last week, to mark the anniversary of his narrow victory over moderate Democrat Paul Vallas, Johnson, a progressive Democrat who is a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer, granted two exclusive interviews, both with leftist news sources, Block Club Chicago and the Triibe. 

As for the former, Johnson queried reporter Quinn Myers, “Name one thing that I said I was gonna do that I haven’t done. You won’t be able to.”

Well, here is one item: Johnson made a campaign promise to hire 200 police detectives. The current municipal budget calls for adding only 100. 

Johnson sees himself as a “movement politician,” and this political species tends to be fond of using hyperbole. Not surprisingly, the mayor used a troubling verb, “assassinate,” when he discussed his movement in the Block Club interview.

“That’s why they worked hard to disrupt it and destroy it, and have gone as far to assassinate it,” Johnson told Myers. “And so whether it’s literally or figuratively, the work to assassinate character or to assassinate our movement, we’re not going to allow that type of fear to disrupt what ultimately the people of Chicago wanted. And that’s why they voted for me.” 

That’s not correct. There are many opinions on why Johnson won. For certain, his former employer and his chief financial backer, the far-left Chicago Teachers Union, outhustled the old-school campaign of Vallas. In my opinion, Chicagoans just wanted a less acidic version of his unpopular predecessor, Lori Lightfoot. So, voters chose the Lightfoot-esque candidate–but without the venomous fangs.

Let’s move on to the second interview, with the Triibe, which was conducted by Tonia Hill.

Wikipedia describes the Triibe as “an African-American online news and digital media company based in Chicago, Illinois.” Until last week I hadn’t heard of it.

Johnson let loose a missile with Hill. “Who expected me to defeat white supremacy in one year?” the mayor said. “There were individuals who did not know the full value of what I brought to the mayor’s office, and there were forces working to disrupt that.”

Whooah.

Johnson wasn’t elected to defeat white supremacy. Voters chose him to run America’s third-largest city, and his primary duty as mayor is to protect its residents–not to peddle far-left talking points.

This is not the first time Johnson has used the racism canard as mayor. He has not handled the migrant crisis well. In response to well-earned criticism of his response to the arrival of arrivals in Chicago, Johnson counter attacked. “Everyone knows that the right-wing extremism in this country has targeted democratically-run cities,” the mayor said. “It is abysmal, and it is an affront for everything that is good about this country for the extremism in this country to use people as political tools to settle political scores for something that happened over 400 years ago.”

Johnson concluded that Republicans are “still mad that a black man is free in this country.”

No, they are not.

The media in Chicago leans left as it does just about every place else in America. But Johnson expects hero worship from reporters, not objective criticism. Consequently, Johnson’s relationship with Chicago’s mainstream media has been rocky, because newspaper and television reporters have been mildly critical of him.

They need to be tougher. A good place for journalists to start is to ask Johnson what he meant when he said, “Who expected me to defeat white supremacy in one year?” In short journos–do your job.

Business leaders, and by the way, not all of them are white, dislike “us versus them” rhetoric. Because they are the “them,” the perceived enemy. But these “enemies” are the job providers. Corporate Chicago largely opposed Bring Home Chicago. After its defeat, Johnson called the opponents of the referendum “wicked.”

Chicago needs as many businesses as it can get. Downtown Chicago’s office vacancy rate is a record 25.1 percent. The downtown retail vacancy rate is 30 percent. Both are records. Downtown is the financial engine that powers Chicago. Kill it, and the city dies. The Detroit dystopia is not a farfetched future for Chicago.

While they had obvious weaknesses in their combined 30 years as mayor, Lightfoot’s predecessors, Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel, were tremendous salespeople for Chicago. Lightfoot, and even more so Johnson, not so much.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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