Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

This should be our policy in Israel: American hostages released or Hamas leaders dead

Posted: November 26, 2023 by John Ruberry in Israel, Israel vs Hamas, middle east, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

In 1904, a Greek American, Ion Hanford Perdicaris, was kidnapped by Ahmed al-Raisuli, a Moroccan tribal leader. Theodore Roosevelt was president. And the official American response to Perdicaris being taken hostage was simple: “We want Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.” There’s more. Roosevelt sent several companies of Marines and seven warships to Morocco. 

The end result was a compromise. Perdicaris was freed and the sultan of Morocco paid a ransom to Raisuni, but also $4,000 to the United States to cover the expenses of the incident.

Moving to the present, our current president, Joe Biden, hasn’t done much more than beg for the release of ten-or-so Americans held in Gaza by Hamas terrorists. 

Yeah, yeah, I know the rest of that narrative, which roughly is, “We’re working behind the scenes to secure the release of all American hostages,” or something like that. 

Begging is more accurate, I believe.

As of this writing, 58 hostages have been released by Hamas, but only one American, 4-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, whose parents were murdered by the terrorists. She was released this morning, as part of third round of hostage released–a fourth is expected on Monday—which is part of a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Israel in turn has released at least 100 Palestinian prisoners.

Obviously, most of the released hostages are Israelis, but ten Thai hostages are now free, as well as one Filipino and one Russian.

Thailand clearly gets more respect than America, although none of the hostages should have been taken.

Hostage-taking and purposeful killing of civilians are both war crimes–not that Hamas cares about that. 

Biden, who favors a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians–which would presumably include Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists–came across far less forceful than Teddy Roosevelt, when speaking of Abigail’s release.

“What she endured is unthinkable,” Biden said. “Thank God she’s home. I just can’t imagine the enjoyment. I wish I were there to hold her.” 

Eww.

Instead, Biden should say this: American hostages released or the Hamas leaders dead.

But Biden, even though he is clearly suffering from cognitive decline, apparently still has enough brain cells for now to realize he’s a tool of the growing hate-Israel wing within the Democrat Party.

Election Day in America is less than a year away.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

National media ignores big Chicago anti-migrant march

Posted: November 12, 2023 by John Ruberry in immigration, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Sure, there’s a lot of another news to sift through–the Israel-Hamas War is the biggest story right now–but on Friday, there was another protest march against the building of a large tent city migrant camp at 38th and California in the Brighton Park neighborhood on Chicago’s Soutwest Side.

The city has signed a lease on the tent city site, but it’s not a done deal, official say, as the final decision is pending an environmental survey.

It will happen, I am sure.

And as far as I can tell, the national mainstream media ignored Friday’s protest. That’s because the march, in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood with a large Asian presence, contradicts at least a couple of leftist narratives. Because they are “oppressed,” people of color are always on the same side against the majority. 

Of course, that majority is white people. While whites are the largest racial group in Chicago, America’s third largest city–for now–hasn’t a majority racial group for decades.

The other leftist narrative that the Brighton Parch marches and protests exposes as a lie is that the cities are havens from the xenophobia, unlike the exurbs and rural America, where those deplorable MAGA people live.

The Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, both woke outlets, reported that “hundreds” participated in the Brighton Park anti-migrant march. 

ABC Chicago says that “residents have been protesting against the migrant base camp for weeks” and overall, “the pushback has been relentless.”

Oh sure, some goof from the New York Times, Mitch Smith, says Brighton Park is “divided” over the tent city, which is expected to house 2,000 migrants, most of the will probably be from Venezuela. But it sure seems hard to find Brighton Park denizens who support the Bidenville.

As I explained in my post last month about the opposition of the migrant camp in Brighton Park, residents learned from the rumor mill that the tent city was coming, not even the local alderman, a left-wing Hispanic woman was told about it. 

Chicago’s new mayor, Brandon Johnson, a full-blown leftist who, according to the rumor mill, has recently suffered from panic attacks, in his mind is always right.  Why is that?

Have you ever met a leftist who admitted to being wrong about something? 

Like Robespierre, Marx, and Lenin, contemporary leftists like Johnson believe they have the inevitability of history on their side.

But Robespierre ended up on the guillotine and the Soviet Union collapsed.

The decision to build the Brighton Park tent city, if it didn’t come directly from Johnson, who by the way is African American, surely it was the brainchild of a top aide of his.

So, another leftist narrative is collapsing. Nothing to see here, the media collectively says to itself. But let’s push out another dozen stories about MAGA insurrectionists.

Oh, let’s say that instead of building the migrant camp in Brighton Park, the Johnson administration chose instead a site inside the city’s 41st Ward, a predominately white area where many Chicago police officers and firefighters live. In 2020, Donald Trump came close to beating Joe Biden in that ward. 

And let’s say anti-migrant protests and marches were held in the 41st Ward. 

Such events would be the lead story for days on CNN and MSNBC. And the New York Times would have sent more than one reporter there.

John Ruberry, who is married to an immigrant, regularly blogs from his home five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Election 2023 Here Comes the Reaping

Posted: November 8, 2023 by datechguy in elections, elections, politics
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With the exception of the shocking election of a GOP Mayor in Manchester NH yesterday was a good day for the left in general and the culture of death and degeneracy in particular including in my own city that overwhelmingly supported a far left democrat over a conservative Democrat for mayor (we still have some of those here in the same way that deep red states have liberal republicans).

Rather than a long post I’m going to hit you with a few quotes and perhaps a line or two concerning them: First Glenn Reynolds on Virginia at Instapundit:

THIS IS A BIG LOSS, AND AS FAR AS I CAN TELL YOUNGKIN DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG: Democrats regain control of Virginia House of Delegates in rebuke to Youngkin.

It took just two years for the people of Virginia to go back to voting for the folks who brought you parents prosecuted for objecting to their daughters being assaulted by boys dressed as girls. This speaks volumes about Virginia and likely ends the whole “Draft Youngkin” business.

Quote two is from myself years ago when Planned Parenthood first moved into my city and the protests began:

Bottom line: If abortion does not end a unique human life then there is no reason to forbid, restrict or even consider it the least bit of controversial. The filming of it would not be an issue the sight of the “bodies” should be no more odd than a trip to the butcher shop and psychologically it should be no more traumatic than any other simple surgery. There would be no reason to want to reduce abortion, after all it’s just another same day operation, in fact we would want to encourage it for the monetary savings to the public.

When people talk about abortion as a “tragedy“, as something that should be “safe, legal and rare” as something we all “want to reduce” they reveal that they know the truth behind it, that we are talking about human life. We are ending a human life for the sake of convince, hardship or panic. We are willing to let it go, discarding it like any other piece of unwanted property, just so long as we don’t have to talk about it.

Like a town the day after a lynch mob strikes or a person at a party of a plantation owner who visits the slave quarters in the evening, we know something is wrong, but we don’t want to embarrass our neighbors and friends by saying a word.

Because once we say that word, we acknowledge reality

The vote in Ohio demonstrates that the paradigm has changed. The move to allow abortion up to birth shows that the left either no longer believes or no longer needs their faux paradigm of caring about life. It’s actually rather consistent with their reaction to the slaughter in Israel.

And that brings us to the 3rd quote this one from Don Surber:

The NYT poll is suspect because it came a month after Biden’s initial support of Israel after the Palestinian army attacked civilians and raped, tortured, killed and mutilated them. There were zero military targets in the October 7 attack. Palestinians broke a truce — again for the 15th time.

Biden’s reluctance to side with terrorists better explains the sudden hullabaloo about his electability. The pressure is not on him to quit the presidency but to quit the decency. Democrats support the terrorists and have for some time.

Democrat support of anti-Semitism and Muslim calls for a second Holocaust should cost the party the next 10 elections but I have learned something over the last two decades about the word should: it is a bet against the odds because man seldom does what he should.

That’s the thing. We say “Should” because Mr. Surber and I both come from the days when this was a strong and unapologetic Christian Nation whose recent defeat of Nazism is a hot war and the Soviets in a cold one seemingly “should” have been the signal for a new golden age for the world.

Alas even strong didn’t recognize that the grand period we were living through was not the norm but the exception to the rules of history. For we forget who the prince of this world is.

I’ll give the last word and quote to Christ himself:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many.

How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.

Matthew 7:13-14

The migrant crime wave is here

Posted: November 5, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, immigration, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“That son of a bitch Castro is sh*ttin’ all over us.” US Immigration officer speaking to Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in the movie Scarface.

And now Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s son of a bitch strongman, is defecating on America.

Where is the mainstream media on this story? 

In the Chicago area, where I live, the MSM is asleep at the wheel. Chicago’s woke daily newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, the latter laughingly calls itself “the hardest-working newspaper in America,” are the worst violators of committing the sin of omission in regard to media bias.

Television and radio websites here are a bit better, but if you want to get the feel of what the Joe Biden’s migrant crisis has done to the Chicago area, there is only one website to visit, CWB Chicago, which works a heck of a lot harder than the leftist Sun-Times.

Here are some headlines from CWB Chicago from just the last six months:

Let’s move on to the suburbs:

As for those links, while the alleged criminals are all referred to as “migrants,” it’s not always stated in these reports where they are from. That being said, in every case where a nationality is named, every time they are listed as Venezuelan.

Before you call me a racist, bigot, hater, or whatever, I want to make a couple of things clear. I believe that most of the people who Joe Biden all-but-invited into our country who have crossed the Rio Grande have come here with good intentions–mainly to make an honest living.

Most, of course, does not mean all. And some migrants have been the victims of crimes committed by other migrants–or by non-migrants. Yes, I am aware that many migrants in Chicago live in wretched conditions, including inside police stations and at O’Hare Airport.

My ethnic background is Irish. If these were migrants from Ireland or my wife’s native Latvia–instead of Venezuela or wherever–I’d still be reporting on the resulting crime wave.

That being said, this migrant crime wave, which of course is not limited to the Chicago area, seems to be driven by recently arrived Venezuelan migrants.

Joe Biden and the Democrats have waved in millions of people into America who we know little about, including many criminals.

The Biden Wave needs to stop.

As for these crooked migrants, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which in Cook County, Illinois, may often be just a slap on the wrist. If found guilty, they should be turned over to ICE officials and put on the fast track for deportation.

These migrants are guests in America.

One more thing: Build the wall.

John Ruberry, whose wife is an immigrant, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.


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