For the sake this basic Question I’ll stipulate that Joe Biden won the last election cleanly and is not the figurehead of a foreign or domestic enemy whose was worried about the success of the US and set a goal to bring US down.
So my question: “If you were a foreign and/or domestic enemy of the United States whose goal was to bring down the country that was prospering under Trump and to that end stole election 2020 to put a puppet regime in place to enact that goal, how would your actions and agenda differ from the Biden Administrations over the last four years?”
Speaking of people trying to bring down the country apparently Dr. Anthony Fauci must not have taken his medication yesterday as he had quite a series of memory lapses.
So the question: How is it that being under oath tends to undermine the memory of people who are supposedly competent intelligent and in charge?
Unexpectedly of courseTM
As I was tying this post a tweet from Rapoport & Pelissero tweeted and the NFL reported that Bill Belichick is out in New England. A news conference has been called for Noon.
I question the wisdom here as Mike Vrabel not withstanding it’s unlikely they will find a better coach but be that as it may.
While Bill might enjoy the first days off he had over the last quarter century the next question is obvious:
How many days off is he going to get before he is snatched up by a team?
If I owned a team I wouldn’t wait and let someone else get him. He’ll need time to evaluate prior to the April draft.
Apparently the number of white recruits in the US army has practically been halved since 2018.
How much longer can the US avoid bringing back the draft?
I’m thinking even with a Trump or DeSantis admin not very long because unless you completely purge the woke you aren’t getting men.
Finally we now have learned that the story concerning Bill Ackman’s wife was shopped to multiple press outlets who rejected it out of hand before Business Insider decided to run with it and then have it blow up in their faces to the point where the owner of the company is rather worried:
Ackman seems to be on the warpath and the folks who green lighted this must be feeling like Admiral Yamamoto at the end of the movie Tora Tora Tora
All of this is interesting and amusing but nobody seems to have the answer to the obvious question:
Who were the people shopping this story?
We need to know their names because if the DEI state falls ironically we will have them to thank for it
During those rare occasions I get into a political discussion with leftists, often the back-and-forth veers into a predictable detour–whether the topic is health care, energy, or the environment–with this reply, “But in Europe they do it this way.”
For the most part, I don’t care how things are done in Europe.
What is the biggest story in Latvia in the first week of 2024?
The failure of new electric trains there, replacing old electrics. The new trains are operated by a company called Vivi. and the trains were built by Skoda Group, a Czech company.
On Tuesday morning, trains were delayed by up to three hours on the Rīga-Skulte line. Latvian Radio correspondent Viktors Demidovs was among those inconvenienced by the delay.
“I saw the new electric train at the station Garciems. I pushed the button to open the door but nothing happened. The conductor opened it manually. There was complete darkness in the train and climate control was not working either. [..] It turned out the train had been standing there for half an hour.”
Vivi representative Sigita Zviedre said there had been an issue with the power collector and the train’s battery had run out.
Vivi also stated that Latvia is not unique in finding deficiencies with new trains after putting them in traffic and said that Lithuania and Estonia had faced similar issues at the beginning.
For emphasis, I’m repeating part of the last sentence of the third paragraph, “…the train’s battery had run out.”
Commuters rely on these trains, and not surprisingly, their malfunctions are a major inconvenience for many of them. Some passengers have been to forced to hail taxi or Uber rides to get them to their destination, and for now, Vivi is offering to reimburse those riders inconvenienced.
Of the 11 Vivi trains that are supposed to be operational, according to Public Broadcasting of Latvia, only six are currently running. While yes, with any new transportation product, some minor and infrequent hiccups are expected, but five of eleven trains not running is too high of a failure rate for just about everyone. Imagine if we were talking about new automobiles instead–and it’s a model that you were considering buying.
Okay, you are very likely reading this blog post from everywhere else but Latvia. What does this have to do with me?
Remember what I said that leftists are obsessed with how things are done in Europe. And they want to replicate, failures and all, the European way here. By the way, much of the funding for Vivi trains comes from the Cohesion Fund of the European Union.
Electric trains, failures and all, may be coming here.
North America has a railroad problem that the rest of the world doesn’t have. As a result, a lot of North Americans think it’s too expensive to electrify that mode of transportation. As we explore electrifying everything everywhere all at once as a key wedge in solving global warming it’s time to debunk that notion.
Why am I singling out North America and North Americans? Because the Americas are singular in their lack of ability and willingness to do what the rest of the world has already mostly done.
Climate futurist? Yep. That’s a thing among those pushing the green agenda. And of course, I’ve noted before that liberals adore trains because they only go where there are rails.
In a practical way, it’s beneficial in North America to see how Latvia is enduring its electric train problems.
Meanwhile, the electric trains debacle is a Latvian cultural phenomenon.
Jānis Liepiņš adds another song to the many tunes about trains, although his mournful ballad, “Dzeltens Melns” (Yellow Black), unlike most train songs, does not celebrate riding the rails.Because of course, when you sit in a Vivi train car, the yellow and black cars often sit still as well.
Mrs. Marathon Pundit also noticed that Latvians on social media are quipping that instead of Vivi, the new electric trains should be named Vai-Vai, which translates into “Ouch-Ouch.”
UPDATE January 9:
The temperature this morning in Riga, Latvia was 32 degrees Fahrenheit (Zero Celsius). The “impact of frost” is being blamed for some Vivi electric trains not running today. Latvia is northern Europe and it borders Russia. It can get much colder than it is today there.
Due to the ‘impact of frost’ on the new electric trains as well as health issues of drivers, several trains in the directions of Sloka and Skulte have been canceled on Tuesday, January 9, passenger carrier Vivi said on Facebook.
About 7 years or so ago, just before my temp job became a full time one I used to work with a particular young lady.
She was 30 years younger than me, very intelligent and a hard worker. Her older sister had gone to school with my youngest son and also worked at the place but as a full timer.
We got along like a house on fire although we were about as politically and religiously different as we could be. I was a straight devout Catholic who after Ted Cruz had lost in the primaries was all in on Trump and while she was a lesbian or perhaps bi who was all in or Bernie and had walked away from the Church, though devoted to her still devout French Canadian grandmother.
While as I said we got along well one of the things about her that regularly dove me nuts was her INSISTANCE that Donald Trump was going to put her in a gulag for being a lesbian.
No argument or evidence could convince her otherwise and even after Trump’s election she remained convinced that any day now a Trumpian gestapo would come for her to her final day at the company back in January of 2018 she clung to this belief. I ran into her older sister who left the company a year or so ago (a great loss to the place) last week and inquired about her. She told me her sister was doing well and apart from the COVID isolation that everyone had gone through had not in fact ended up in a gulag during the entire span of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Which brings us to election 2024.
I’ve already noted the invincible irrational hatred that some have for Trump which I think will be a real problem come election day, but the only thing more irrational than that hatred (particularly from some conservatives) is the abject fear of some liberals of a 2nd Trump term in terms of their personal freedom.
To put it simply. If there is one thing that was perfectly clear during the Trump years is that while he had harsh words and abrasive and even insulting tweets for those who opposed him Trump did not censor nor imprison those who opposed him loudly.
You’d think that if Trump was a wanna be dictator he might have, you know, acted like a dictator, imprisoned a few folks on “Trumped” up charges, used the power of the FBI or the IRS against them or even gone after those burning cities and thrown the book at them for their terroristic actions.
Or to put it another way: If you ask people to raise their hand if Donald Trump imprisoned or even censored you for speaking out against him during his first term the number of hands that will go up will be equal to the number of Camels this person has spotted.
On the contrary it was In fact it was Trump himself who was often censored and/or misrepresented particularly when he suggested that there were treatments for COVID out there that were effective and the Biden administration who has used all of these tactics on those who might dare suggest that the previous election was not clean and the government’s statements on COVID might not be all that accurate.
Put simply Trump has a record of not imprisoning’s or harming his foes, so what makes anybody think that he’s going to be doing so if re-elected, particularly since he will go into office as an instant lame duck who can’t run for a 3rd term?
Of course this kind of logic is lost on the Jack Smiths of the world and on those who think looting and burning cities is fine but walking through the capital while police hold doors open for you is high treason and can’t tell the difference between barbarians who rape murder and kidnap women and children and those who retaliate against the folks who do so.
No amount of argument will apply here. This is a matter of faith for them and if we are blessed with a 2nd Trump term they will insist that their lack of imprisonment was simply because he either didn’t get around to it or that the brave democrats of the house prevented him from doing so.
Unexpectedly of course.
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Conservatives, I certainly like to think, have great political ideas, such as believing in smaller, and therefore less expensive government, and we believe in aggressively pursuing overall public safety.
And that is where conservative political acumen, particularly in states like Illinois, ends. Much less so than liberals, we are people of the private, not public sector, and we are not constantly thinking about, or scheming, about politics. I’m pretty sure leftists think about politics as often as 16-year-old boys think about sex. In both situations, that’s too much, but conservatives need to have their political radar–and sonar–always switched on.
That is why the unhappy conservatives in Illinois need to begin now to plan for the 2028 vote to call for a constitutional convention. The current constitution, which is deeply flawed despite its relative youth, went into effect in 1970.
While the Illinois General Assembly can call for constitutional convention any time, Article XIV of the 1970 constitution stipulates that every 20 years the question of holding a “con-con” must be presented to voters. If 60 percent of voters–or a majority of those casting a ballot in that election–votes “Yes,” then a constitutional convention must follow. Voters in the next general election can choose to accept or reject the resulting document.
Four years from now–yeah, 2028.
But what about the 2024 presidential and congressional races? And the 2026 midterms? Yeah, they’re important too. But conservatives need a long game. A very long game. Make that a winning game.
Leftists plan for the expected as well as the unexpected. As for the latter, once the COVID lockdowns started, liberals were calling for widespread mail-in and early voting, as well as a plethora of ballot drop boxes.
They had contingences in already mind–and now Joe Biden is our president. Do you understand yet?
As for right now, we can start with talking about the many flaws of Illinois government, generating what urban activists call “street heat.”
A new Illinois constitution can attack those problems.
And there are so many problems in Illinois, which has been annually losing population for ten years.
Gerrymandering. This is a problem statewide. Saying that legislators draw their own districts is not correct. It’s the state House speaker and the state Senate president who drive the redistricting process. Independent commissions should draw General Assembly districts and for all counties and municipalities with more than 50,000 residents.
An attempt in 2016 to change the decennial redistricting process by a constitutional amendment was ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court.
Legislative leaders. Boss Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat who is currently under indictment for racketeering, was House speaker for all but two years from 1983 until 2021. He’s been around for so long that Madigan was delegate to the 1970 constitutional convention. One of the arguments against calling for a con-con in 2008, when this issue last faced voters, was that Madigan wouldn’t be around forever. But he hung on for another 13 years. After Madigan was ousted from the speakership–amid a federal investigation–his replacement and the state Senate president drew another gerrymandered General Assembly remap. It was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker, breaking his campaign promise to veto partisan redistricting. Forgive me, I know it took me a while to get here, but House speakers and Senate presidents should be limited to single two-year terms.
Term limits are needed for all elected offices. Statewide, from municipal library boards up to governor, elected public officials should be limited to eight years in office. Just before Christmas, Chicago alderman Ed Burke, after 54 years in the City Council, was convicted on over a dozen corruption charges. A quick look at Madigan and Burke’s careers shows that they weren’t able to amass enough power to abuse it until they had been in office for about a decade. ‘Nuff said.
Illinois’ electoral votes. Liberals hate the Electoral College and Illinois conservatives hate that every four years every electoral vote in the Land of Lincoln goes to the Democratic presidential candidate. Instead, Illinois needs to distribute its electoral votes in the same manner Nebraska and Maine do it. The presidential candidate who wins the most votes in Illinois gets two electoral votes. As for the rest of Illinois, the candidate who wins the most votes in a congressional district–Illinois currently has 15–gains that district’s electoral vote. I suspect liberals won’t be on board because winner-take-all benefits them in the Prairie State, but didn’t I mention that leftists hate the Electoral College? Oh, speaking of Nebraska, the Cornhusker State has a unicameral state legislature. All Canadian provinces have the same system. Just saying, but Maybe Illinois doesn’t need a state House and a state Senate?
Cash bail. The most fundamental duty of any government is to protect its citizens. The SAFE-T Act, which went into effect three months ago, abolishes cash bail. It’s bad legislation. Re-establish cash bail as part of the law enforcement process.
Township government. Illinois has more units of government, despite being only the sixth-most populous state, than any other state. Pennsylvania is a distant second. Illinois needs to remove the deadwood, starting with township government, a 19th-century relic.
State holidays. This may seem petty, but holiday creep is a problem in Illinois. Limit state holidays to federal holidays and Lincoln’s Birthday. Require a 2/3 vote in the General Assembly to add a new state holiday. Sorry state workers, you need to show up to work on Casimir Pulaski Day, General Election Day, and the day after Thanksgiving. As someone with a December birthday, the day after Thanksgiving is an ideal one for me to renew my driver’s license.
Rotten schools. Give parents the right to send their children to private schools with vouchers. Establish home schooling as a parental right. According to the latest Illinois Report Card, only 35 percent of students read at grade level and just 27 percent of them are proficient in mathematics.
Too many statewide offices. The constitutional offices of treasurer and comptroller should be combined, and the position of lieutenant governor should be abolished. Place the attorney general next in line when the governor’s office is vacant.
Corruption. But add one more statewide elected office, that of inspector general, who will be responsible for investigating corruption from the governor’s office down to village halls.
Lockdowns. Permit the governor to issue statewide stay-at-home orders only after a 2/3 vote by the General Assembly.
Pensions, the 800-pound beast. The 1970 constitution has a pension guarantee clause. Drop it and establish a non-partisan commission to resolve state and municipal underfunded pension plans. And compel new state workers to pay into Social Security but make 401(k) programs available to them.
I know, Illinois is a deep blue state and I’m a dreamer. But we have four years–almost five, really–to plan for the 2028 vote for an Illinois constitutional convention.
You have your new year’s resolution.
John Ruberry, a fifth-generation Illinois, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
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