Posts Tagged ‘Da Magnificent Seven’

Some righteous blows against the left

Posted: July 26, 2022 by chrisharper in entertainment, Sports
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By Christopher Harper

With the left’s stranglehold hold over the past few decades on much of the arts, entertainment, and sporting industries, it’s encouraging to see conservatives gaining ground.

For example, singer John Rich aimed his latest song, Progress, at the left’s agenda—a piece that quickly rose to the top of the charts on most music websites. If you haven’t seen the video, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMEECbKOH7Q

In the song’s lyrics, Rich outlines a variety of divisive subjects, including his views:

–America’s replacement of religion with government
–Immigration and the death of American soldiers during the evacuation from Afghanistan
–The encroachment on freedoms during the COVID lockdowns
–The impact on Main Street as Wall Street profited from government actions

The message of the chorus is hard to miss:

Stick your progress where the sun don’t shine.
Keep your big mess away from me and mine.
If you leave us alone, we’d all be just fine!

But there’s more. A trio of motion pictures, Top Gun: Maverick, The Gray Man, and The Terminal List, underline individual achievement and patriotism. While the critics may not like these films, audiences love them, highlighting how the elite no longer has much to do with what people like.

In Top Gun, Navy pilots have been tasked with destroying a uranium enrichment plant in a dangerous mission from which few of the fliers are expected to return. Spoiler alert: The pilots complete the difficult mission through individual heroism, military teamwork, and patriotism. 

In The Gray Man and The Terminal List, special forces operators fight corruption in the intelligence and military through a determination to fight evil at all costs. 

The Gray Man, which appears in theaters and on Netflix, comes from a book by Mark Greaney, who helped Tom Clancy with the Jack Ryan series. Jack Carr, a former Navy Seal, wrote The Terminal List, which is a series on Amazon.com. 

All three films are about as red, white, and blue as you can get, emphasizing the importance of moral decisions and individual accomplishment. 

But there’s even more. 

In the heart of leftist academia in Ann Arbor, Michigan, head football coach Jim Harbaugh underlined his pro-life stance. 

Harbaugh told ESPN he encourages his family, players, and staff members that if they could not take care of a baby after an unplanned pregnancy, then he and his wife would take the child and help raise it.

“I encourage them if they have a pregnancy that wasn’t planned, to go through with it, go through with it,” Harbaugh said. “Let that unborn child be born, and if at that time, you don’t feel like you can care for it, you don’t have the means or the wherewithal, then Sarah and I will take that baby.”

In a world where a lot seems headed in the wrong direction, it’s heartening to see conservatives fighting back in arenas long dominated by the left. 

Pritzker meddled in GOP gubernatorial primaries

Posted: July 24, 2022 by John Ruberry in covid, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Amazingly, the quiet presidential campaign of J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire pol from the family that created the Hyatt hotel chain and more, continues. That says about the girth of Illinois governor’s ego and the threadbare status of the Democratic presidential bench, as the failures of the Joe Biden administration continue to mount.

Illinois, despite the influx of COVID bailout cash, remains a financial basket case. At best, Pritzker and his fellow Democrats have only chipped away at the state’s pension bomb. Illinois has the worst-funded public pension system among the states. In 2021 the Prairie State lost 122,000 residents, only New York and the District of Columbia, percentage-wise, saw a bigger population drop.

At Wirepoints, Mark Glennon, justifiably eviscerated Pritzker in his critique of the governor’s trial run of a presidential campaign speech given last weekend in Florida. Yes, Florida, the place that Democrats, including Pritzker’s wife during the worst period of the COVID-19 lockdowns, flock to, despite the governorship of Ron DeSantis, a man they hate. Oh, while in Florida–Pritzker was there to give the keynote speech at a gathering of Florida Democrats–he contracted COVID. I wish him well–as someone who was afflicted with COVID last month, I can say that it is not an enjoyable experience. 

I’m going to focus on just a couple of items from Pritzker’s dishonest Florida speech. “We honor the results of elections,” Pritzker said, obviously alluding to the Capitol Riot and its show trial investigation of it by the House January 6th Committee. In response Glennon retorted, “In Illinois, that would be elections based on the most gerrymandered map in the nation, which he approved in violation of what many regarded as his most important campaign promise – to deliver fair maps.” Yes, Pritzker repeatedly vowed as a candidate in 2018 to veto gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps. The Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly–in place because of the 2011 gerrymandered map–sent to Pritzker’s desk new contorted legislative maps, which Pritzker signed into law. 

Pritzker lied–and free and fair congressional and state legislative elections in the Land of Lincoln died. But since Glennon’s article was posted, the Chicago Tribune revealed that Pritzker this year contributed $24 million to the Democratic Governors Association. That group spent millions on ads supporting the most conservative Republican candidate running to replace Pritzker this autumn, state Sen. Darren Bailey, who easily won the GOP nomination. Yes, I voted for Bailey. 

As with other races the DGA has meddled in, the group saw Bailey as the most conservative, or in their likely thoughts, the most extreme candidate. And presumably the easiest one for Democrats to defeat in November. But such a ploy might backfire. In another Republican gubernatorial primary race that the Democratic Governors Association meddled in, its preferred “extreme” candidate, Doug Mastriano, trails the Democratic nominee by only a few points. Yes, he can win, which has some Dems nervous. 

On the flipside, imagine the mainstream media uproar if Republicans funded the campaigns of a Bernie Bro socialist running in a Democratic primary. They’d cry, “Election interference,” and “This is undermining free and fair elections!”

A couple of times in my lifetime–on the presidential level–Democrats received the GOP general election candidate they were rooting for, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Donald Trump in 2016. You know what happened.

Bailey, in deep blue Illinois, faces a tougher hurdle than Mastriano. But much can happen in the next four months, and Joe Biden’s continued mismanagement of the economy, the border–heck, his complete mismanagement of everything–may compel moderate Land of Lincoln voters to send a message to the Democrats. 

Are there enough such Illinoisans to send Pritzker packing? 

Not yet, as a recent poll tells us.

Because of high taxes, Illinoisans suffer from among the highest gasoline prices in the nation. Pritzker, under the guise of a tax cut, is forcing Illinois gas station owners to post signs informing motorists of the “tax cut,” which is really a delay in an inflation adjustment, suspending it until December. Gas station operators who refuse to post the required signage face a $500-a-day fine. Without the fine threat, Illinois grocers are also being forced to post similar signage about a one-year suspension of a one-percent sales tax.

If Pritzker prevails over Bailey, look for his presidential campaign to begin. It will fail. Pritzker is not a likable candidate–and Illinois’ standards are low. His flat speeches are drenched in condescension. Pritzker comes across as a sleazy closer at a Las Vegas timeshare presentation, a meeting that you only agreed to endure after being promised free show tickets and two glasses of wine “Sign here,” he’d say, “you won’t regret it,” as all 350 pounds of him leans into you.

But not even alcohol can make Pritzker more palatable. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Slouching toward Philadelphia

Posted: July 19, 2022 by chrisharper in crime
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By Christopher Harper

It’s only been about a month since 73-year-old James Lambert Jr. died–one of the most disturbing murders in Philadelphia’s violent history.

But his death has almost faded from the media coverage and the public conscience as other brutal crimes continue in the City of Brotherly Love.

Here are the pertinent facts: surveillance video shows a teen hoisting a traffic cone above his head before striking Lambert. Then, a girl in her stocking feet with a pair of sunglasses atop her head can be seen retrieving the cone and appears to do the same thing. It looks as if she strikes the older man not once but twice. Another child seems to be holding up a phone to videotape what is happening as another rides his scooter. 

Lambert died while walking in a neighborhood about a mile from Temple University, where I worked for many years. 

Two “children”—a 14-year-old boy and girl—have been charged with murder for killing Lambert with a traffic cone that struck him in the head.

Back in the day, “the neighbors were the village. They policed you. They parented. They would tell your parents if they saw you doing something that you weren’t supposed to do, and before they told your parents, they would say something to you. You really couldn’t get away with a lot,” Christine Brown, director of community services for Beech Companies and who grew up near where the attack took place, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Things are just different. Children don’t speak to their seniors, and seniors are afraid to live in their own community, and that’s sad.”

“Back in the day” was a long time ago. Maybe the early 1960s? Since that time, Philadelphia has become a mess, mainly because Democrats have led the city to the brink of despair and disparity. 

Philadelphia isn’t much different from a lot of cities. The school system is bankrupt, and a new superintendent seems more interested in an “anti-racist” curriculum than a formula for learning.

The police chief has neutered her officers.

The district attorney is a George Soros post child.

The mayor has given up even though he has a year left in his term.

The only change after Lambert’s death is a new curfew. Those aged 17 and younger must be indoors and off the streets by 10 p.m.; those 13 and younger must be home by 9:30.

If the schools don’t teach children much, the police chief and district attorney don’t enforce the law, and the mayor has given up, I find it unlikely a curfew, which won’t be enforced, will change Philadelphia’s slide toward anarchy.

A school superintendent who emphasizes learning may make a difference, but school vouchers would be a better solution.

A change in the attitudes of the police hierarchy and the prosecutor would make a difference. 

A new mayor—preferably a Republican—also might make a difference. The Democrats have run the city since 1952, and maybe 1952 was “back in the day” when times were, in fact, better.

A good ride

Posted: July 5, 2022 by chrisharper in media
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By Christopher Harper

After working for nearly 50 years, I finally retired last week.

It was a good ride for much of my working life.

I stumbled into journalism at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, which I attended mainly because my high school girlfriend went there.

In relatively short order, I dumped the girlfriend and my accounting major, choosing journalism because cool kids in my graduating class in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, worked for the high school newspaper.

I got a chance to cover events, such as the ill-fated presidential campaign of George McGovern and the American Indian Movement takeover in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, catapulting me into various exciting jobs.

While attending Northwestern University, I started at The Associated Press, where I wrote about economics, including the downturn of Playboy’s hold on American men and the fifth anniversary of the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

With a helpful hand from a Northwestern professor, I got a job at Newsweek, which allowed me to ramble throughout the Midwest, covering labor and some local politics. I even got to profile Minnesota Twin Rod Carew as he almost succeeded in hitting .400 one year.

Nevertheless, I had an overwhelming desire to work in Washington, D.C., where I had spent a semester reporting for two small newspapers in South Carolina and Tennessee during the days of Watergate.

But I found Washington wanting—a boring place of people who thought too much of themselves.

During my two-year stay there, however, I got a chance to report on one of the most intriguing stories of the 20th century: the death of more than 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana. I was one of a handful of reporters who surveyed the scene of bloated bodies killed in a ritual of suicide and murder.

When I complained to my boss at Newsweek that I wanted to get out of Washington, he only half jested that Beirut was open. My wife Elizabeth and I headed off to the Mideast for a fascinating frontline look at the history of deceit and death there.

An unwilling war correspondent, I managed to cover three significant Middle East confrontations: the Lebanese civil war, the 1982 Israeli-Palestinian war, and the Iraq-Iran war.

When I discovered that the Beirut reporter for ABC News made more than two times what I did at Newsweek, I switched to television. My talents in front of the camera were far inferior to my abilities as a producer/reporter, where I lasted for 15 years in Cairo, Rome, and New York.

Along the way, I had a front-row seat at history, meeting several presidents, many influential individuals, and myriad common folk who made a difference in our world.

I jumped into academia at the end of my journalistic line, mainly because the news business had changed into a profit-making enterprise.

Although the time wasn’t as exciting, I taught several thousand students how to write—a once-needed skill that has fallen on hard times.

I also managed to travel throughout the world, holding teaching assignments in China, England, Italy, Poland, and Russia.

Now I’ll focus on the next phase of life, where I have several legal cases to analyze as an expert witness, three dogs to walk every day, a weekly trip to the Catholic Church as a lector, and this column to write.

I think I’ll still have some good times ahead!

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