After news broke that Mitt Romney was going to be, well Mitt Romney, word is out that another GOP senator (I don’t count Murkowski) is willing to consider a Jan 6th commission under some conditions.
Mitt’s move was not a huge surprise given that it’s unlikely that opposing it will make those who want him out in Utah like him more and will earn brownie points with the deep state than can be spent on his children and grandchildren who wish to be a part of it, nor does Murkowski move surprise me as she might as well go all out to get Democrats to vote for her come re-election time as the GOP is ready to let her go.
But for those who might be surprised at Portman’s move is almost classic in terms of how politics works or at least used to work in DC.
Portman understands that the Democrats want this commission very badly and it would be useful for the Democrats to get a GOP senator not named Romney or Murkowski on board to try to give their witch hunt a veneer of legitimacy. He also knows that there are likely a few GOP members who are only with Trump and the GOP base publicly.
So this gives him a lot of leverage, by laying out conditions that he might be willing to consider a 1/6 commission he can achieve a lot:
He can get leverage for spending that he wants for his state
He will (doubtless) get good press from the media for doing so.
He can put the Democrats in a position where they feel the need to give concessions on such a commission
If the Democrats refuse his compromises he can go to the base & claim he exposed them.
If the Democrats go along he can claim to the base that he forced them to give ground to make it more fair.
He might be able to play the Sir Humphrey gambit per the video below:
It may or may not work for him but in the old days that’s how it was regularly played.
Last week, Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, to mark the second anniversary of her inauguration, said that on that day she would only grant one-on-one interviews to black or brown journalists to protest the “overwhelmingly white” City Hall press corps.
She was immediately attacked by journalists of all colors for this boneheaded move. And rather than backing down Lightfoot doubled down on her stupidity. A frog sitting in a polluted pond has more common sense she does.
Lightfoot wants more diversity among the members of the media who cover her. But the kind of diversity I have in mind is much different than what she envisions–but it is sorely needed. We need journalists who are regular people.
That’s a bold proposal, I know. But there are too many out-of-touch elitists telling us how they think the world is.
A leftist Democrat, Lightfoot is a special kind of awful for her to face such hostility from the local media, which, with the notable exception of John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, is overwhelmingly liberal. In the past two years Chicago’s murder rate has soared, it has been hit with two rounds of widespread looting and rioting, which that media has deemed instead “civil unrest,” and she hasn’t confronted Chicago’s millstone, the billions of unfunded public-worker pension obligations created largely by the indifference of longtime mayor Richard M. Daley. Her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, at least made baby-step efforts to tackle the pension problem.
Of course Lightfoot will blame the COVID-19 pandemic for most of these problems. Her overbearing and pedantic press conferences on COVID probably lead most people to tune her out, which is a sound idea. And as I noted last year at Da Tech Guy, Lightfoot ordered the closing of Montrose Beach on a toasty August morning because the day before a large group of people gathered there despite her lockdown orders.
Wow! That will show ’em who is boss! The beach is closed! Go to your and stay there without your dinner! Grrr!! Grrr!
Later that night and into the following morning that second round of looting and rioting, which Chicago police officers, probably following orders from above, mostly just contained, not confronted.
Let’s get back to that diversity crisis.
On this weekend’s Flannery Fired Up on Fox Chicago the host, Mike Flannery, a fair journalist by the way and a white fella like me, twice asked a panel gathered on Zoom consisting of a black journalism professor, an Hispanic alderman, and an African-American state legislator if a lack of newsroom diversity has prevented the acurrate reporting of a story.
Here’s how Flannery phrased his query the second time, “Give me an example of a story that was poorly covered because white journalists were covering it instead black or Hispanic journalists.”
The trio responded only with vagueness–although the professor did mention crime in a general sense. But none of them could cite a specific example of bias, or even poor coverage, to answer Flannery’s question.
Crisis?
The host said there needs to be more minorities in newsrooms. I agree. But let’s make the local media even more diverse. How about some conservative voices? Or perhaps some individuals who can bring what diversity advocates call “real life experience” into the conversation?
Let’s talk about those riots. I have a client, an Indian-American man, whose parents own a convenience store on the city’s West Side. He still helps out there once in a while. Twice last summer during the riots the store was emptied of all but debris. What about them? Oh, sure, the helicopter media will do an interview here and there with a merchant after rioting, oops, “civil unrest,” but reporters primarily focus mainly on the issues they see a more important, such as why the riots started in the first place. Yes, root causes shouldn’t be overlooked.
People are creatures of habit in many ways of course, including shopping. When my client’s family store re-opened, not all of their customers returned. Their pattern was disrupted. Restaurants in that area are facing the same problem. Grand re-openings cause a big splash–but will the journalism school alums who as adults have only worked jobs in the field have the instinct to follow up six months or a year later to see if normalcy really returned? The Tribune’s Kass, whose father was a grocer, knows better.
Let’s talk about the real life experiences within my family. After many years as a limousine driver Mrs. Marathon Pundit was laid off when the COVID lockdown began. How many journalists have a spouse who drives a limo? Too many journalists are married to other journalists–they’re an inbred lot. Real life experience anyone? We quickly ascertained the chances of a call back to her old job were bleak. So Mrs. Marathon Pundit decided to work as an Uber driver again. But this time there was a problem. There was an outstanding $200 parking ticket from 2005 that hadn’t been paid on a car that I usually drove that was registered to both of us. Now to become an Uber operator in Chicago a driver, among other things, must have a clean driving record and no outstanding parking tickets.
The two prior times Mrs. Marathon Pundit was approved as an Uber driver that parking violation, which let me remind you was 16-years old, didn’t come up. Why is that? Also, in Chicago, there is–wait for it–no statute of limitations on parking tickets, which places that attack on society on the same level as murder and arson.
Among the issues that Lori Lightfoot successfully ran on was a promise that she would do away with “draconian ‘anti-scofflaw’ laws” that prevent people from driving a cab or working as a rideshare driver, or even being employed by the city.
Of course if I was a City Hall reporter I’d ask Lightfoot, without bringing up my ancient parking ticket of course, “What about your vow in regards to what you called the ‘draconian anti-scofflaw laws’ on parking tickets as well as banning the used of the ‘boot” for parking violators?”
Followed up with, “Why is there no statute of limititions on parking fines in Chicago?”
We paid that $200 ticket, even though I don’t recall parking my car where the City said I did all those years ago. A keypunch error–someone could have transposed a licence place digit–could be why we were cited. In Chicago, like many other places, the law is upside down in regards to parking violations. It’s up to the accused to prove themselves innocent.
Chicago–and every place–needs journalists who hammer public figures on issues such as parking tickets. And omnipresent red light cameras. Do you know that minorities in Chicago are hit harder by parking and traffic fines? Who says? Lori Lightfoot said so two years ago. “We can longer ignore the documented existence of racial disparities in Chicago’s fines, fees and collection practices,” then-candidate Lightfoot told voters. Instead, Lightfoot has doubled down on the fines. Since March Chicago drivers captured by traffic cameras going as little as six-miles-per hour over the posted speed limit face fines.
Of course such issues aren’t as meaty as the Holy Grail that all journalists strive for, breaking the next Watergate Scandal. But I can assure you that most Chicagoans care a heck of a lot more about being burdened by oppessive traffic and parking fines–as opposed to Lightfoot’s opinion that the City Hall’s media corps isn’t diverse enough for her.
Do I really have to go into detail about how most Chicagoans are abhored by rioting and looting?
Diversity isn’t a color. It’s a mindset.
John Ruberry, who has been working in sales for years, regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.
The NCAA made loud proclamations in April that it could pull events from states with limits on transgender athletes. Still, now the college sports governing body has caved and will allow tournaments in states including Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas despite their laws restricting trans athletes.
The NCAA sided with transgender athletes only last month, saying they may cancel events in states that aren’t “free of discrimination” against transgender athletes.
The NCAA Board of Governors made its announcement as more than two dozen states proposed, debated, and advanced legislation aimed at requiring state schools to ensure that athletes compete only in the category of their birth gender.
But now, only a month later, the NCAA announces that despite its saber-rattling in April, it will allow events in states that have already passed laws limiting transgender athletes to birth gender categories, Yahoo! Sports reported.
The biggest loses here isn’t the left but Governor Noam of South Dakota who threw away her National political future with the GOP base paying the Danegeld without earning the friendship of the Danes when holding out a few months more would have been a win.
Screwtape: For men usually feel that a strain could have been endured no longer at the very moment when it is ending or when they think it is ending.
In this as in the problem of cowardice the thing to avoid is the total commitment. Whatever he says make his inner resolution be not to bear whatever comes to him but to bear it for a ‘reasonable period’ and make the ‘reasonable period’ be shorter then the trial is likely to last. It need not be much shorter. In attacks on patients chastity or fortitude the fun is to s to make the man yield when, had he but known it, relief was almost in sight.
Had she but known she would not have blinked. Still it’s good to know if she would have run or not before we fight back to back. Cue Hawkeye:
Two crucial statistics jump out at me about the pandemic.
The nation is recording about 50,000 COVID cases a day, roughly the same as before the election.
The daily average of deaths stood last week at 610, which compares with 817 in the week before the November election.
Despite all the mask-wearing, lockdowns, and vaccinations, the numbers are roughly the same after Joe Biden took over.
Sure, the numbers are better than January and February. Still, the country is roughly at the same place after the Democrats repeatedly attacked Donald Trump for his incompetence in handling the pandemic.
That then leads me to the rather obvious question: Wasn’t the pandemic more about politics than science?
The COVID coup was successful in getting rid of Donald Trump. Now it’s time to return to the mask-less, feckless, and reckless job of ruining the country.
I’m more than happy to rid myself of the rather useless mask and return to the restaurants and shops without a face covering.
But isn’t it somewhat disingenuous of the Democrats to declare victory?
The Democrats, combined with their friends in the media, used the pandemic to get Trump out of office. Although the talking points convinced many to vote for Biden, the reality is that Trump did a pretty good job of dealing with a crisis no one had faced for a century.
The Democrats and the media scared people almost to death or at least to vote against Trump. Without the pandemic, Trump would have been easily elected based on the country’s economy alone.
I won’t get into the idiocy of wearing masks because of the “science.” We’ve gone from the scientists telling us that masks were ineffective to the need to maybe wear two masks to the CDC announcement that masks weren’t needed anymore for many people.
The most damaging part of the coup was to lock down almost everyone across the nation. Not only did the lockdowns, which were mainly the decisions of state officials, tank the economy, but the actions also exacerbated the disease for many people.
For example, the CDC has determined a reason for a higher percentage of Blacks and Hispanics dying during the pandemic. “[P]ersons from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups might be more likely to live in multigenerational and multifamily households.” Therefore, more Blacks and Hispanics died BECAUSE of the lockdowns. See https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e1.htm
That findings are even worse for those 65 and older. From May 1 to August 31, 2020, 78.2 percent of those who died were 65 and older. That’s three out of every fourth death was a senior when they represent only 16.5 percent of the population.
Simply put, the lockdowns made life deadlier for many seniors who died during the pandemic.
Although it’s unlikely, I hope some people realize that they got played by the “scientists,” the media, and the Democrats. The numbers don’t back up the “science.”
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