Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Tom Hagen: Right now we have the unions and we have the gambling and those are the best things to have. But narcotics is a thing of the future. If we don’t get a piece of that action we risk everything we have. Not now, but ten years from now.

The Godfather 1972

A few years back 2016 to be precise I wrote a piece called: The Ghastly Tom Hagen Math Behind the Democrat response to Orlando where I wrote the following:

Right now the left has the Gays and the Transgenders and the Hollywood elites & media in which they are overrepresented and they figure that’s the best things to have, but in America Islam is a thing of the future.  In 20 years the children of Muslims now being raised on the tenets of Sharia law in America will be old enough to vote and Democrats going to make sure they get those votes when the time come, not now but 10-20 years from now.

Well the first real manifesting of this turned out in the city of Dearborn Michigan when the Democrat woke LGBT agenda clashed with Muslim parents who don’t want that stuff pushed on their kids:

A school board meeting in Dearborn, Michigan, had to be shut down when a mostly Muslim crowd of parents (with some Christians as well) became outraged by what appeared to be resistance by the school board to their demand that various books advocating the queer agenda be removed from the public school libraries.

Twitchy notes how this has caused a bunch of confusion for the left:

Remember when Attorney General Merrick Garland, Biden’s Department of Justice and the FBI allegedly targeted parents as terrorists for showing up and speaking out at school board meetings? That era may be over, as a result of a breakdown in the left’s system of intersectionality. You see, for the left, it’s fine to call a bunch of mostly white and suburban parents racists and terrorists, but when Muslim parents start showing up and protesting the same issues, things get… difficult.

This tweet says it all:

This is a crisis for the left who has completely embraced the Groomer agenda but doesn’t want to risk alienating the growing Muslim population.

the chant “Vote them out!” that closed the meeting is not merely a chant, it is a clear prediction. When next this school board comes up for election expect the large Muslim community of Dearborn to run its own slate, and expect that slate to win handily. Expect that victory to force major changes in the curriculum at the city’s public schools, including if necessary the removal of many administrators and staff.

When the time to make a choice comes, do not doubt for one second that the Groomer LGBTQ agenda will go under the bus because the last thing the Democrats want is the growing Muslim population voting for the GOP due to the culture wars.

One of the things that has really been revealed by the war in Ukraine is just how weak and unready the Russian Army is. Moreover a lot of Russians were in favor of the war in Ukraine when it looked like it would be a cakewalk to retake the territory that until the breakup of the Soviet Union was part of Russia proper since the days of Napoleon, but once it became clear that it would involve actually fighting, actual causalities and a mobilization the whole pride thing went out the window.

It’s amazing how much harder war is when people are willing to shoot back rather than roll over. I would not be surprised if this lesions the fear of China’s untested military as well.


It’s a tough call for Ukraine when it comes to how the war ends.

They have a good point that they don’t want to reward Russia with any gains but the longer the war goes on the more likely Putin decides to play the tactical nuke game. Ukraine can likely get the best deal it could get right now but in the words of Lincoln if they consider this war for a purpose they see no reason to end it before that purpose is achieved.

Since it’s their blood that being spilled it’s their call, as long as I don’t have to keep paying for it.


This story via Gateway Pundit made me smile:

I predict that in the woke sweepstakes Muslims trump gays, drag queens and transsexuals’ for two reasons:

  1. The Muslim population of the US continues to grow
  2. There have been unfortunate and unhealthy consequences for those who defy those communities

One of the reasons why Sicilian American’s like myself don’t mind people associating us with the mob is it make people less likely to try to mess with us (also we don’t give a damn what others think). With the reputation of Islam backed up by 30 years of shall we call them “incidents” I suspect school committees are going to think twice before they mess with them.


Sometime in the next month we are likely going to see a pivot in tech companies.

Once they decide they can not stop the GOP from winning the House and perhaps the Senate they are going to be a lot more hesitant to oppress members of the GOP when there is a prospect of lawmakers striking back.

Now of course as long as they control the White House and the Justice Department they have a modicum of protection and I’m sure they’ll go all in no matter who the GOP nominee is but most companies don’t want grief and don’t want scrutiny and when it becomes clear who is going to win I suspect these firms will decide to be on the winning side.


Finally a lot of people I know have dropped Paypal like a hot potato. Being a person who is a tad more deliberate I’ve decided to wait till after the first of the year.

This will give me time to decide what I’m replacing it with, to contact donors to see if they wish to switch to whatever service I go over to and to evaluate my opitions.

Also in terms of taxes and their preparation it will be easier to have the account active through at least January.

This does involve some risk but if I’m right about the tech pivot that should give me enough leeway to move deliberately without a lot of worry. If I’m wrong, then it’s on me.

By John Ruberry

As you’ve learned in my recent posts at Da Tech Guy, Illinois’ SAFE-T Act will become effective on January 1, which will make the Prairie State the first in the union to abolish cash bail. Under very narrow circumstances, accused criminals can still be jailed, but these are among the crimes that will be non-detainable, which means, after perhaps 24 or 48 hours, they’ll walk free until their trials.

  • Aggravated Battery
  • Aggravated DUI
  • Aggravated Fleeing
  • Arson
  • Burglary
  • Intimidation
  • Kidnapping
  • Robbery
  • Second-Degree Murder
  • Threatening a Public Official
  • Drug-Induced Homicide

    Fact checkers, an ever increasingly dishonest lot, have been running to the defense of the law, which is being championed by the far-left of the Democratic Party. Illinois’ governor, J.B. Pritzker, a likely candidate for president if Joe Biden doesn’t run for reelection, probably plans to use the SAFE-T Act, which passed the state Senate at 5:00am on the last day of the 2021 veto session, to enshrine his woke credentials for 2024. 

    Illinois’ rising crime rate is a hot-button issue this election season, as it should be. The opinion of prosecutors of the SAFE-T Act is hostile. As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, 100 of Illinois’ 102 county prosecutors–they’re called state’s attorneys here–oppose the law. Tellingly, Kim Foxx, a George Soros-funded politician who is the so-called prosecutor in Cook County, where I live, is one of the two who support it. 

    Claiming the SAFE-T Act is in violation of the Illinois constitution, at least 24 state’s attorneys have filed suit to prevent it from going into force.

    As of October 9, these prosecutors include: 

    And I may be way short on this count. East Peoria’s mayor, John Kahl, claims 50 state’s attorneys have filed suit again the SAFE-T Act. But I’ll stick with my number for now–I derived my figure after an exhaustive Google News search. Some of the plaintiffs are Democrat and some are Republicans. Many county sheriffs have joined in on these lawsuits, most of which list Pritzker, Illinois’ attorney general, Kwame Raoul, and the state House speaker and state Senate president as defendants.

    Pritzker, along with some Democratic members of the Illinois General Assembly, are promising that changes will be made to the SAFE-T Act after Election Day, but no details are being offered. Which means that Illinois voters shouldn’t take their promises seriously. During Thursday’s televised debate with his Republican opponent, Darren Bailey, Pritzker didn’t mention any specific changes that he favors to the law. Bailey favors full repeal of the SAFE-T Act.

    Pritzker, as I’ve written for my own blog, has resorted to the ad misericordiam fallacy, an appeal to sympathy as the props up the controversial law. He keeps clinging to an apocryphal story about “addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” Breitbart, in an honest fact-check, shot holes into Pritzker’s “Diapers Mom” argument.

    If the SAFE-T Act is so wonderful, then why does Pritzker have to lie when he defends it?

    John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

      By John Ruberry

      The foremost political issue in Illinois is crime. And we have plenty of other issues to choose from, including negative population growth and endemic corruption. The election of Kim Foxx as Cook County’s state’s attorney in 2016–her campaign was funded by radical leftist billionaire George Soros–set forth a rise in crime in Chicago and its inner suburbs that accelerated during the COVID-19 lockdowns

      The spirt of Foxx’s catch-and-release philosophy of law enforcement will go statewide, but only worse, on New Year’s Day when the SAFE-T Act goes into effect. In case you missed my last two posts at Da Tech Guy, I cited a Democrat, Will County state’s state’s attorney James Glasgow, who had this to say to Fox Chicago’s Mike Flannery about the SAFE-T Act, “There are forcible felonies that are not detainable: burglary, robbery, arson, kidnapping, second degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, [and] drug offenses.” Which means these accused felons walk free with the promise of returning for trial. An exception for flight risks, which a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney, John Curran, who is now a Republican state senator, says is almost impossible to use for jailing accused criminals. Curran told John Kass last month in his Chicago Way podcast that the SAFE-T Act passed the state Senate at 5:00am in the morning on the last day of a veto session of the General Assembly. He was given one hour to read the 764-page bill.

      Some critics of the SAFE-T Act are calling it “the Purge Bill,” a reference the 2013 movie, The Purge, where crime goes unpunished for a 12-hour span.

      As I noted before, Pritzker notoriously claimed that the SAFE-T Act was about “making sure that we’re also addressing the problem of a single mother who shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay for bail.” I called on the fact-checkers–even contacting them directly–to vet that statement. I’m considering offering a $1,000 reward to the person who finds Pritzker’s “diapers mom.”

      Kass, a former Chicago Tribune journalist who was essentially demoted after his woke colleagues falsely claimed that a column he wrote blowing the whistle on Soros was anti-Semitic, now writes essential articles at John Kass News. He’s been at the forefront of the battle against the SAFE-T Act, and he’s calling for its repeal. Illinois’ Democrat governor, billionaire J.B. Pritzker, is promising unspecific changes to it after next month’s general election. He’s up for reelection, his opponent is state senator Darren Bailey. 

      Kass says, and I’ve been expressing the same view, that the Democrats are panicking about the SAFE-T Act. As they should, it’s a dangerous law that is a threat to public safety. He’s asking that Pritzker call an immediate special session of the General Assembly, “eat a few platters of steaming hot crow,” and repeal the SAFE-T Act. “J.B. Pritzker has the supermajority,” Bailey told NBC Chicago, which Kass recalled in his column. “Why hasn’t he called the legislature into action? Literally a text or a phone call, we could be demanded to meet in Springfield within a few hours. Why aren’t we meeting tomorrow at 9 o’clock hammering this thing out?” I believe I know the answer to that question. Pritzker wants to run out the clock.

      Kass suspects that the SAFE-T Act is a woke exercise in credential building for the governor’s possible run for president. I’ll add my own theory. In addition to minting a badge of honor for himself, Pritzker is prepping himself for receiving a Nobel Peace Prize as the prophet who, at least in Illinois, atoned for the murder of George Floyd. Only the aftermath of an in-force SAFE-T Act will anything but peaceful.

      Ads from the People Who Play By The Rules PAC focusing on violence have been very effective, even though at least three Chicago television stations have banned “The Scream.” A more recent ad, even more disturbing than “The Scream,” shows a robbery and a bloody assault that occurred last Sunday on Chicago’s CTA Red Line train. A few hours earlier my daughter was a passenger on the Red Line. One of the perpetrators in this attack has been arrested. He’s now locked up, amazingly, bail was denied to him. But the People Who Play By The Rules PAC has this message for Illinoisans, the attack you’ll below is “a non-detainable offense under Pritzker’s Purge law.”

      Bailey, in my opinion, is still a decided underdog in the gubernatorial race, but the downstate farmer is closing his gap with Pritzker according to a recent Fabrizo, Lee, and Associates poll.

      Twice last week non-political acquaintances of mine told me, “Hey John, you are wrong about the SAFE-T Act, I read a fact-check about it.” I exposed the phony SAFE-T Act fact-checks in an entry on my own blog a few days ago. Yet once again, and almost certainly not for the last time, I am compelled to point out that fact-checkers are primarily propagandists for various leftist narratives. And if you are told by someone that you are incorrect about the SAFE-T Act and they cite a fact-check as evidence, this needs to be your response: vomit on that person. 

      Back to Pritzker: If he is really serious about addressing the numerous flaws in the SAFE-T Act, he’ll call for that special session of the General Assembly with the purpose of repealing all of it. His feeble and non-specific calls for changes to the SAFE-T Act are empty promises. 

      Early voting for the November election in Illinois began last week. One way to block a Pritzker run for president is for voters to evict him from the governor’s mansion. A whole bunch of new state legislators in Springfield is needed as well.

      By the way, no Republican legislators voted for the SAFE-T Act.

      John Ruberry regularly blogs from suburban Cook County at Marathon Pundit.