…for all their fury expressed in public and willingness to intimidate police and administrators in western cities in the year they have been marching NONE OF THEM HAVE TAKEN UP ARMS TO HEAD TO THE MIDDLE EAST TO FIGHT.
Quite a few Jews have gone to Israel to fight and there is no shortage of Jewish citizens currently under arms but none of these brave protesters, whose men of military age would constitute a mighty army, for all their loud pronouncements are ready to go off to war to fight those who they claim are committing genocide.
They seem quite invincible when it comes to shouting and screaming and going after lone counter protesters with a mob behind them, but the prospect of facing an armed Jew, man or woman, even with numbers in their favor makes them wet their pants.
They are like the man on the train that Confederate Joseph Johnston encountered after the Civil War who loudly proclaimed the southern cause but when asked by the former general in what regiment he served said that circumstances didn’t allow him to fight. Johnston described him to a friend later as the type who were “Invisible in war and invincible in peace.”
These protesters are “Invincible” in the safety of the western world in places where the rules of free expression are stretched to their breaking point to allow them to denounce Israel as genocidal monsters.
But “invisible” when it comes to putting themselves on the line to fight against them when there is the risk of harm.
Unexpectedly of course.
Cue Python and the Ballad of Sir Robin:
Frankly if I was Israel I’d finance people to dress up like the minstrels in this skit and taunt them
While he’s only 17 months in his first term in office, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson is on pace to be remembered as one of America’s worst big city mayors. The competition to be inducted into that shameful club includes some real rascals and incompetents, such as New York’s Jimmy Walker, Detroit’s Coleman Young, Cleveland’s Dennis Kucinich, and Chicago’s Big Bill Thompson.
The insufferably incompetent and complicit Chicago media, once among the America’s best, rarely mentions that “Branjo,” prior to his election as mayor, was a longtime paid organizer–that means agitator–for the far-left Chicago Teachers Union. The CTU was the largest donor to his mayoral campaign, and it supplied ground troops to get Johnson elected. Yes, I know, Johnson was also a Cook County commissioner. While in that job he authored no memorable legislation.
Johnson, in short, is in the pocket of the CTU.
Why can’t you say so, Chicago media?
Chicago is essentially broke because of massive unfunded pension obligations, and so is Chicago Public Schools.
On Friday afternoon, all seven members of the Chicago Board of Education resigned because they refuse to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who was appointed by Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot. Johnson has called on Martinez to resign, the mayor supports the fiscally anemic CPS to take out what’s widely being called a “payday loan” to pay for pension obligations and big raises for CTU members.
Martinez opposes that, and clearly, so do the former board members. Unlike Martinez, the board members who just quit aren’t Lightfoot holdovers. Johnson appointed all of them.
Richard Nixon had his Saturday Night Massacre, @ChicagosMayor has his Friday Afternoon Massacre. And once again, Branjo will probably blame Nixon for his problems.
The president of the Chicago Teachers Union is Stacy Davis Gates. She’s an ill-tempered leftist who is possibly crazier than US Rep. Rashida Tlaib. Gates, it’s important to know, sends her son to a private school. Of course she is against school choice for everyone else, as is Johnson.
Besides its money problems, Chicago Public Schools do a horrible job educating students. Even though CPS spending continues to soar, student test scores continue to be quite low. Roughly three-quarters of CPS students are unable to read at grade level—and math scores are even worse.
Can this story get any worse?
In Chicago, getting worse is the normal.
As part of a transition to a fully elected Board of Education, ten seats for a new board are up for election this fall–voting has already begun. Johnson will appoint the remaining 11 seats.
The new members that Johnson will appoint will be out of office in a few months. Branjo will task them to fire Martinez, approve the “payday loan” for those pension obligations, and approve a big raise for Chicago’s unionized teachers.
Good government types in Chicago—amazingly, they really exist–condemned Johnson’s pro-Chicago Teachers Union power play. Surprisingly a large majority–over eighty percent–of the Chicago City Council, including aldermen who are members progressive caucus and two of the six socialists, have expressed opposition to Branjo’s move.
As Barack Obama famously said, elections have consequences. Chicago voters choose poorly.
Crime, despite laughable denials from Crain’s Chicago Business, also known as Crain’s Chicago Anti-Business, is a serious problem Chicago. The office and retail vacancy rate downtown are over 25 percent. For 2025, Chicago faces a $1 billion deficit.
Sadly, there is not recall mechanism in place for Chicago mayors.
Troi:Run programme. Simulated Worf: The control system for the primary containment field is not functioning. Simulated LaForge:Something’s severed the ODN conduit between here and the antimatter storage deck. Troi:Geordi, could you repair the ODN conduit if you went into the crawlspace? Simulated Worf: Sir, that crawlway is in a warp-plasma shaft. He would never survive the radiation. Troi: I know that. Geordi, could you repair the conduit? Simulated LaForge: Yeah, I think I could. Troi:Then do it. That’s an order. (He exits) Riker:End simulation. Something told me you wouldn’t let this go. Congratulations. You passed. Troi:That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? To see if I’d order someone to their death.
The Mossad already got walkie talkies in the hands of Hezbollah back in 2015. The walkie talkies contained an extra large battery and also gave the ability of Mossad to eavesdrop on ALL Hezbollah communications, which it did for nine years.
Now while Hezbollah has been hitting Israel bigly over the last year, at least till operation “don’t fear the beeper” finally was launched they have also launched plenty of rockets and various attacks over the 9 years that Israel was collecting data.
That means that in order to keep Iran and their proxy terrorists in the dark during that time they would have had to allow some of those attacks to get through over that time as if they were unexpected because they could not risk them assuming their communications were being intercepted.
In hindsight of course this decision may in fact lead to the destruction of Hezbollah as anything resembling an effective fighting force and possibly to the freedom of the Lebanese from under the Iranian proxy’s thumb.
But to achieve that Israeli citizens were put at risk and some likely died.
It was a tough call, the time of call a person who has the lives of thousands or millions has to make or to quote the TNG episode above before Troi figured it out: “My first duty is to the ship.”
I’m old enough to remember when the US had leaders able to make those hard calls.
The final in a series of four posts on divisional series for my Dynasty League.
New York Daytraders (Mets) 94-68 2nd place NL Beta (3rd Seed)
Offense: The Daytraders finished tied with the Giants for most NL homeruns (140) led by 1971 AL MVP Willie Stargell (.331 Avg 32 HR) , Norm Cash (22 HR) and Craig Nettles (20 HR). Stargell & Ted Simmons (.281 13 HR 30 2B) drove in 91 each tied for 8th in the league. Leron Lee hit .328 (4th in league) 2nd in Slugging and OPS, with 8 Triples and 16 HR of his own. Willie Mays acquired from Montreal 1/3 of the way through the season managed to draw 51 walks with the Daytraders
Defense: The Daytraders .983 fielding percentage is decidedly ordinary. Their catchers only threw out less than a quarter (9 of 39) of baserunners stealing although Ted Simmons only committed 4 errors in 1245 2/3 innings. The 2nd base platoon was either perfect (Leron Lee no errors in 627 errors) or sloppy (Wayne Garrett 12 errors in 508 1/3 innings Norm Cash did well at first (.995). Stargell might have been a terror at the plate but in the field his seven errors and only 2 assists were much more friendly for their opponents. Both Leo Cardenas (ss) and Craig Nettles (3b) committed 18 errors with an above average fielding percentage for their position
Pitching: With a starting 3 of Tom Seaver Steve Carlton and Phil Niekro all throwing over 300 innings (Seaver 303 2/3 ip Carlton 310 Niekro 304 2/3) each with over 20 (Carlton 23, Niekro 22 Seaver 21) wins. 66 wins in 66 Complete games a bullpen is almost an afterthought. 3rd in NL ERA 3.10 and batting .227 and 1st in strikeouts in the majors with 1224 with Carlton (329) and Seaver (320) one and two in the majors by far. Roger Nelson acquired in a trade with KC went 13-7 in 26 starts and 2 relief appearances with a WHIP of 0.96 and an avg against of ,195 both 4th in the league. Alas their closers were only 64% effective with Lerrin LaGrow saving 8 of 12 the teams 16 saves 19th of 20th teams with only the 46 win Dodgers having fewer.
Atlanta Bananas 98-64 1st place NL Alpha (2nd Seed)
Offense: Atlanta’s offense begins and ends with Triple Crown winner and presumed MVP Billy Williams .386 39 HR 143 RBI who also led the league in OBP, Slug OPS hits and 2nd in runs (116) and Hits (203) Dusty Baker at .315 avg .389 OBP, .481 Slugging and .870 OPS 96 Runs and 185 Hits is no Williams but would lead most teams. Cesar Cedeno drove in 95, 15 SB, scoring 106 runs (3rd) and 52 doubles leading the league. The teams 132 runs are just behind the Giants. and their .269 Team avg leads the NL
Defense: The Bananas defense will not be putting the fear of God into anyone, at .982 they near the bottom of the league with Pittsburgh (.981) the only playoff team worse. More respectable is their caught stealing percentage of .419 4th in the NL but there are some bright spots like Aurelio Rodrigues with only 11 errors in 1424 1/3 innings at 3rd and young Toby Harrah with only 15 errors in 667 chances. Ralph Garr (4 Errors) Cesar Cedeno (5 errors) and Dusty Baker (6 Errors) will give guys a chance but Baker added 11 baserunner kills and Cedeno 16 to keep them honest. While Billy Williams did not impress at 1b he was errorless in over 150 innings in the outfield.
Pitching: Catfish Hunter, Fergie Jenkins and Mike Cuellar make a formidable 1-3 starting lineup with Sonny Siebert and Dave McNally (acquired in the Dave Giusti deal with SF) makes it even deeper. Add to that Rollie Fingers 18 saves in 21 chances and you have a team that can shut down anyone top to bottom. The downside, While the team gave up the fewest walks in the majors (376) that meant a lot of pitches over the plate quite a few going out of the park with Cuellar (24) Jenkins (20) and Catfish Under (15) and Siebert (10 in 149 1/3 innings) and McNally (8 in 115 1/3 innings all vulnerable to the gopher ball. Still with a .228 team avg against and a 3.10 team ERA clearly the long ball hasn’t counted them out.
Series 1 April: Opening day at Atlanta
An injury to Catfish Hunter ended his day after 1 2/3 inning but no matter 3 other Atlanta pitchers shut out the Daytraders while Toby Harrah, Ed Kranepool each drove in runs and Dusty Baker drove in 2 one on a solo shot off loser Tom Seaver to give the Braves a 4-0 win. In game 2 Fergie Jenkins gave up only 5 hits, two of them solo shots while Steve Carlton was shelled giving up 10 run (9 earned) on 15 hits for a 10-2 rout. The Daytraders took the final game as Phil Niekro outdueled Mike Cuellar 4-1 as two errors along with a strong start in the first doomed Atlanta.
Series 2 May at NY
Atlanta and NY split their second series Tom Seaver winning game one over a healed up Catfish Hunter. All the scoring was in the first with a Billy Williams solo shot in the 1st for the Bananas and a two run double by Norm Cash give NY their 2-1 final. In game 2 Ken Reynolds held the Daytraders to a single run on a fourth inning grounder while Billy Williams drove in two and Tito Fuenties, Leron Lee and Caesar Cedeno each drove in one for the 5-1 margin.
Series 3 at Atlanta
Atlanta swept the short series Catfish Hunter giving up 5 in 9 inning but the final three after his team had already scored 9 Dick Billings and Billy Williams treated Phil Niekro’s flutterball with distain as the bananas piled on 12 hits. In game 2 Fergie Jenkins also gave up 5 in only 5 innings but got the win as Atlanta put up 11 in 5 innings pounding Roger Nelson. The 12-8 final was not nearly as close as it seemed.
Series 4 at NY
The final series took place vs the 2nd Atlanta manager and the Daytraders paid back the Bananas in kind with a sweep. Game one saw the Daytraders again get to Fergie Jenkins early chasing him after 3 with 5 runs including a 2 run shot by Craig Nettles who would drive in 3. That was equal to the number Nelson gave up (2 earned) as NY won 6-3 Game 2 saw Catfish Hunter give up a pair of long ones to Stargell and Lee while Seaver only allowed two runs over nine (Both driven in by Billy Williams) in a 5-2 win. In the finale Steve Carlton in contrast to his first meeting with the Bananas gave up his only run in on a 9th inning solo shot. Hard luck loser Mike Cueller made one crucial mistake but it was to Craig Nettles with two on which gave the Daytraders a 3-0 lead. Leron Lee would get 3 hits and drive in the 4th run for the 4-1 final.
Season Series 5-5
This is likely the most evenly matched series so far in the playoffs which makes sense as these two teams fought for the division title all season. Atlanta was held back by chaos in the dugout with three different managers this season but their current leader put together a surge that clinched the division. The wildcard is the fact that the Daytraders have yet to face the new Atlanta manager.
The Bananas have a great top 3 starters actually a solid top 5 but the Mets have the most frightening top 3 in the league with a solid 4th. On the other hand while the Daytraders have an great offense Atlanta counters with the triple crown winner Billy Williams. Neither team has a great defense so it will come down to the starters. That edge has to go with the Daytraders although Fingers makes the Atlanta Bullpen decidedly better. This series should definitely go five and it’s as close to a pick-em as you can get but if you force me to choose I’d have to go Daytraders in 5 but by the smallest of margins. I suspect the Bananas vulnerability to the long ball will be the difference.
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