Voting irregularities and worse in Cook County as the winner of the Dem Primary for state’s attorney remains unknown

Posted: March 24, 2024 by John Ruberry in election 2024, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“Let me tell you about Florida politicians. I make them. I make them out of whole cloth, just like a tailor makes a suit. I get their name in the newspaper. I get them some publicity and get them on the ballot. Then after the election, we count the votes. And if they don’t turn out right, we recount them. And recount them again. Until they do.” Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) in Key Largo. 

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” Johnny Rotten, at the end of the last Sex Pistols concert of their 1978 tour.

Last night a bombshell broke as votes are still being counted in from last week’s Illinois Primary in Cook County. Cook, where I live, is Chicago and its inner suburbs. It’s as Democratic as Manhattan. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden collected nearly 75 percent of the vote.

As I noted in my DTG post two weeks ago, the Cook County state’s attorney race was collecting most of the attention of voters. Jussie Smollett’s protector, the pro-criminal and George Soros-funded Democratic incumbent, Kim Foxx, after two tumultuous–for law-abiding citizens–terms in office, is retiring. Running on non-specifics, Clayton Harris III–Rod Blagojevich’s last chief-of-staff–received the endorsement of the extreme-left Chicago Teachers Union. The CTU is arguably the most powerful political force in Chicago. It placed Chicago’s leftist mayor, Brandon Johnson, one of their former organizers, in office. If CTU is behind Harris, you can assume he’ll continue the failed legacy of Foxx.

The other candidate, who I endorsed, is a traditional Democrat Eileen O’Neill Burke, who has promised to dial back some of the extreme pro-criminal polices of Foxx. Violent crime, theft and more has soared under her misrule

On the morning after Election Day, O’Neill Burke was leading Harris by 51-49 percent–about 10,000 votes–with votes from a few stray precincts and many mail-in ballots uncounted. Per Illinois law, any ballot postmarked on Election Day or earlier that is received at the local board of elections by April 2 must be counted. It’s believed that most of the mail-in ballots have been received and already counted, and not surprisingly, O’Neill Burke’s lead has shrunk to 4,000 votes. The far-left has embraced alternative forms of voting.

Illinois has drop boxes for ballots too. 

Yep, just like in the Dinesh D’Souza movie, 2,000 Mules. Yep, Mark Zuckerberg boxes.

Last night, Alderman Brian Hopkins, who represents downtown Chicago, dropped a bombshell on X. His original post was deleted, here’s what he had to say last night:

Correction: after counting what was stated as most of the remaining mail-in & dropbox ballots, EOB [Eileen O’Neill Burke] holds a 4,000+ lead. BUT…election staff told me they misstated the total number of remaining ballots, and 14,710 more (most are dropbox, so not postmarked) still must be counted.

It gets worse. Because the Chicago Board of Elections may have had these ballots since last Monday.

Why weren’t these votes counted Tuesday night? Or heck, Wednesday morning even? By the way, decades ago, when I was a Little Marathon Pundit, even in the closest elections, we knew who won an election a day to two later after polls closed–at the latest. We’re declining as a society even as technology has greatly progressed.

It gets worse. Here are a couple posts from Max Bever of the CBOE earlier than Hopkins’ second X post last night. Bever apparently found some ballots he “mistakenly left out.” If you call his move a “Bever hunt,” then shame on you. Anyway, to refresh your memory, the alderman said the “found” ballots are drop box votes.

Statement from Max Bever, Director of Public Information, Chicago Board of Elections: “In adding up the total number of Vote By Mail ballots the Board had received back so far, I mistakenly left out additional ballots that had been received back via USPS the evening of Mon, 3/18.

I traded speed for accuracy in reporting out numbers this week as quickly as I could. I truly regret this error on my part and for the confusion that it has caused the voters of Chicago. I will share updated numbers only when they are accurate and verified.

The vote counting continues this afternoon.

I am crossing my fingers and praying that EOB holds on to her lead. With the crime high rates in the Chicago area, my life may depend on it. For real. I’m at vulnerable age that thugs view as a target.

At the very least, you call what is happening in the Cook County vote count irregular and incompetent.

Except for verifiable reasons, such as a military deployments and temporary out-of-state work assignments, absentee and early voting should be abolished. Drop boxes should be unconditionally dropped.

Whatever happens in the state’s attorney race, supporters of both candidates are probably going to cry “foul.”

And if there is credible evidence of a stolen election in the Cook County state’s attorney race, then we have an even more serious problem. Because if large numbers of citizens don’t trust the election results, it calls into question the legitimacy of government–and of American society.

There were lot of “irregularities” and then some in the 2020 presidential election. But Democrats were silent four years ago because they liked the result.

Yes, there were certainly many Republican crossover voters, but about half of Cook County voters backed O’Neill Burke in last week’s primary. Many Democrats, at least in Cook County, might soon have a different opinion on mail-in voting and drop box ballots soon.

It’s quite likely that updates to this post are coming.

Oh, for the days when we only had Election Day, not Election Season. Oh, for the days when votes were counted in one night–not for a whole week.

UPDATE 7:40pm EDT:

Election Week County continues, as NBC Chicago’s Mary Ann Ahern tells us. Oh, some background. The Cook County Clerk counts suburban votes, the Chicago Board of Elections tallies city votes. Why not just one agency? The public sector is rotten to the core. Ahern in the first X post appears to be referring here to suburban votes.

The Cook County Board of Elections tonight says it will count the remaining Vote by Mail votes on Monday. There are a little more than 1 thousand County votes not yet counted. The bulk of their VBM ballots, 7 thousand were added to the County totals on Thursday. #StatesAtty

But what about the county-wide total? Well, Eileen O’Neill Burke’s lead continues to shrink, as Ahern reports.

NEW: @EileenCookCnty lead now ist [sic] 2015 over @ClaytonforCook#StatesAtty.

Update March 29 9:30 EDT:

After ten days–yes, ten days–of vote counting in Crook County, Clayton Harris III, the Kim Foxx candidate, has conceded, about an hour after AP called the race for Eileen O’Neill Burke and after EOB declared victory. The retired judge won by 1,500 votes out of over 500,000 cast.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

They’re all Infidels anyways Roma McDaniel Edition

Posted: March 24, 2024 by datechguy in Uncategorized

I remember quite a while back an Islamic terror attack that missed their primary target and ended up sinking a French Vessel. When questioned about this failure and the killing of people who were not the primary targets Islamic cleric pooh poohed it noting “They’re all infidels anyways.”

That seems to be the case with Roma McDaniel at NBC.

There is a long history of republicans playing useful idiots for Democrats on air so when I heard that McDaniel who was tenure as RNC chair was one of the least successful in party history (to put it in perspective Michael Steele was FAR more effective in winning races for the party than she was) was hired by NBC I presumed that she would become part of a long line of ineffective RINOS whose primary job was to attack the GOP in general and Donald Trump in particular as would be befitting a niece of Mitt Romney.

But the Democrats have reached a point where they have pandered to the niche market of leftists to such a degree that even a Republican almost universally disliked by voters of the right is just too conservative a voice to be allowed a platform on the sacred landscape of MSNBC.

She’s no Douglas Murray but the slightest possibility that she might threaten the bubble of silence surrounding MSNBC viewers was simply too much for leftists to bear. In fact even being restricted to the primary NBC channel is making huge waves. As twitchy put it:

We’ll have to see how this all plays out for McDaniel, but we know one thing: It’s fun watching the Left wig out because a media outlet that features Jen Psaki hired an unpopular Republican to provide Republican commentary.

You see what McDaniel and folks like Mike Gallagher fail to realize is that no matter what favors they do for the left, in their eyes they’re still just “infidels” to be rejected when they quit being “useful idiots” for them and revert to just “idiot”.

Unexpectedly of course.

“Squatters rights” will result in vigilant justice

Posted: March 23, 2024 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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There has been a sharp increase in squatter claims making the news. If you aren’t familiar with “squatter’s rights,” its an area legally called adverse possession, where someone can lay claim to a space after occupying it for so many years. The average person would think this is trespassing, but there is a legal distinction in that trespassers don’t claim to own the property, but squatters do. This allows someone to break into an abandoned home, act like they own it and thus become impossible to evict.

If you think this sounds crazy…that’s because it is. But we live in the world of crazy, such that someone can break into a 4.6 million dollar home near Lebron James and simply occupy it, even throwing parties and renting out spaces. Or one that allows a squatter to put a Temporary Restriction Order on the owner of a home and kick him out in Washington.

We do, seriously, live in a clown world.

Not surprisingly, because the police either can’t or won’t stop this insanity, it is spreading wildly, especially in deep blue states like New York. In every part of the world where I’ve seen private property rights degrade, the sequence goes like this:

  • Criminals go from individuals to gangs that are well organized
  • Private citizens begin offering services to counter the crime
  • Criminals begin to get violent
  • Private citizens begin to “disappear” individuals

We’re already seeing organized squatters, including a lot of illegal immigrants, targeting wealthy homes in groups. We’re also seeing other citizens develop businesses around evicting squatters, including a self-proclaimed “squatter hunter” who charges $5,000 or more to kick out squatting parties. Sadly, we’re seeing a death toll too, as two squatters beat a woman to death for simply trying to reclaim her home.

The next step is squatters will start disappearing. Contrary to popular belief, police exist to protect the guilty, especially people accused or guilty of serious crimes.

Think about it, if you thought your neighbor sexually molested your child, what would stop you from beating them to death? I mean, if your kid was abused and scarred for life, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t at least contemplate burying the culprit 6 feet underground. The police and your belief that justice is best served in a courtroom are what stops you from pursuing this.

As we remove cops and courts, mark my words, we’re going to see squatting stop, because people are just going to disappear. Squatters are going to get beaten to death by angry mobs of property owners and their bodies dumped in the street. Nobody will say anything, just like people in Italy were silent on mobster killings. Vigilante justice will fill the void, and with it will come the settling of petty disputes and rivalries at the end of a stick and a gun.

Some people are cheering this on. They are thinking “Yes, finally, I can settle my score with so and so.” To that I shake my head. We all think we’ll be the ones on top when the world shatters, but in reality, in a world of might makes right, the most despicable people rise to the top. Look to the French Revolution if you need an example.

Some states are getting ahead of this, namely Florida, which passed legislation to allow police to kick off squatters. Even New York is beginning to modify its laws, likely too late to prevent the mass exodus of businesses.

More so than politics, we need to get a handle on squatting before it turns decent people into crazed vigilantes.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Where did those Pallets of Cash to Iran Go? Try the ANC or Why South Africa is Targeting Israel

Posted: March 23, 2024 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

W.H. Auden

During one of my “Under the Fedora” roundups last year I wrote this about the “African Peace Mission” to Ukraine:

I didn’t give much attention to the African Peace Mission to Russia/Ukraine because it had no hope of success but there is one aspect I’d like to note. One of the delegates is President Ramaphosa of South Africa whose country you would call a basket case, if you wanted to insult basket cases that is.

Given the issues of violence, crime, electricity, infrastructure, and an inability of basic services in his country that he either can’t or won’t address it makes perfect sense for him to fly half way around the world to earn brownie points. It’s sort of like Gavin Newsome going after Florida. Much easier than solving problems at home.

Lately South Africa has been in a news a lot, for leading the charge against Israel and claiming it is committing Geocide in Gaza. They’ve gone to the international criminal court and continue to lead the international charge against the Jewish state.

Of course the reality is if Israel wanted to commit Genocide in Gaza they would have left their troops and home and completely flattened the place after Oct 7th (or any of the previous times Hamas was hitting them) rather than after 8 months of war deciding to deport Cancer patients that they were treating for free:

But that still leaves the question why is South Africa, a state that isn’t Muslim or Arab making such a fuss about Gaza when they have no state in it at all.

Well two things come to mind quickly, the first and most important is Iranian money:

The same week that the ANC got its finances in a better state, South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, according to South Africa’s Daily Maverick news outlet.

High-profile South African activists such as former Institute of Race Relations CEO Frans Cronje and Accountability Now Director Paul Hoffman both said earlier this month that reports are emerging that Iran fixed the ANC’s finance problem.

“The South African government is the same thing as Hamas. It’s an Iranian proxy, and its role in the war is to fight the ideological and ideas war to stigmatize Jews around the world,” Cronje during an interview on Chai FM Radio.

Iran has been cultivating SA for a while, apparently they’ve been putting those pallets of cash to use.

But the 2nd reason can be found it a story linked by Don Surber today about South Africa that isn’t getting a whole lot of play internationally:

Residents rich and poor have never seen a shortage of this severity. While hot weather has shrunk reservoirs, crumbling infrastructure after decades of neglect is also largely to blame. The public’s frustration is a danger sign for the ruling African National Congress, whose comfortable hold on power since the end of apartheid in the 1990s faces its most serious challenge in an election this year.

A country already famous for its hourslong electricity shortages is now adopting a term called “watershedding” — the practice of going without water, from the term loadshedding, or the practice of going without power.

I’ve been writing about the basket case that is South Africa for years:

In 1990 the year that Nelson Mandela was released South Africa’s unemployment rate was at 18.78% doubling the 1980 rate of 9.24%.  By the first year of free elections (1994) it was up to 22.89%.  There was a sudden drop in the rate in 1995 to 16.71% but by 1997 the rate was back over 20% (20.95%) and since h left office in 1999 through 2010 the rate has averaged 25.76%  from a high of 30.41% in (2002) and a low of 22.23% (2007).

The current rate in the 3rd quarter of 2013 according to government stats is 24.7%

That piece was from ten years after I wrote that article the rate is over 32%

Last year linked a piece about the electricidal situation

Besides no airlines, no postal service and no trains, there is a dwindling electricity supply. They have rolling blackouts, euphemistically called “load shedding” which can last as much as 10 hours per day in Cape Town. Johannesburg is worse. People survive by always keeping their thermos flasks filled with hot water, using small gas camping stoves and using rechargeable lanterns for light and a healthy supply of batteries and candles at all times. Food rots in refrigerators so one needs to purchase small amounts of groceries just for a day. Few people can afford to have a generator, let alone the exorbitant cost of diesel fuel. Without electricity there is no viable economy. Retail stores, restaurants, businesses and factories cannot operate. The employees are idle and cannot do their job. As a result they are unable to earn a livelihood. The lack of electricity is a complex topic. In a nutshell, a history of huge financial losses, mismanagement, sabotage and corruption is evident.

Well at least there is equality…of misery:

There have always been people begging on the streets; mostly blacks. Now however, they are joined by ever-increasing white beggars. I did see an entire family including small blond haired children with crude cardboard signs saying “Please help – God bless you” .

According to some reports, over 50% of South Africans live in poverty on less than $2.00 a day. Some have no access to sanitation, water or electricity.

Well yeah sure South Africa has been known as the rape capital of the world for years and doesn’t have electricity in their capital city and now can’t even provide water to it’s people half of whom live on under $2 a day but at least with Iran’s help the ANC is doing OK.

The bottom line is really simple. To solve the problems of Electricity, infrastructure, food and water in South Africa involve having the will to take on the problem of ANC which has been using South Africa as their personal plaything since Mandela left power and perhaps before.

It’s actually the same dynamic that you see today in US cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, DC where you have Democrat/Marxist rule for decades. The actual problems of the cities involve ending the gravy train for the connected and that’s just not to be done, much easier to pass a resolution against Israel in Gaza. Keeps the activists happy and the money to the connected flowing.

That’s South Africa who cares if the people starve or die of thirst if the ANC can keep getting Iranian money for going after Israel. That’s what counts to those who rule exploit South Africa

Closing thought: These topics are generally considered VERBOTEN in the MSM because in their mind to speak the truth about South Africa post apartheid is to suggest white minority rule was better. I’ll leave Glenn Reynolds to answer that:

It’s not black rule. Botswana next door is well-run. It’s rule by leftists, which always makes everything suck. And they always use race as an excuse for their failures. You can see that in the deep-Blue parts of the United States.

UPDATE: via Elder of Ziyon Great quote from Douglas Murray on the subject

Murray blasted South Africa, saying, “I always think that for voters in any country, first order of priorities: getting the water clean; getting the roads running; getting the infrastructure working; getting healthcare; getting education. I do think that quite often, in my observation — I’ve covered a lot of countries around the world — quite often in my observation, those first-order priorities, if the government fails at that, it does distraction kinds of things. … I don’t think it’s something of primary importance to the people of South Africa; I don’t think it’s first order priorities for the voters, and I’m suspicious when governments pull international tricks.”

The words you’re looking for are: “NAILED IT”!

You really need to see the full interview:

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