Posts Tagged ‘Da Magnificent Seven’

Reasons to oppose Pritzker for governor and president

Posted: June 26, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news
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Blogger at the border

By John Ruberry

There is speculation that Illinois’ Democrat governor, J.B. Pritzker, is considering a run for president. A visit last week to New Hampshire is his first clue. 

But Pritzker, a billionaire scion of the family that owns the Hyatt Corporation, faces reelection for governor this fall. I’ll be voting for the Republican candidate, and I of course dearly hope whoever the GOP entry is in November will make Pritzker a one-term governor. 

There are many reasons to be against Pritzker for governor–and president. Let’s get started on why.

Gerrymandering. As a candidate in 2018, Pritzker vowed several times to veto gerrymandered legislative maps. He lied. Unless you are an aficionado of Cubist art or a Democrat activist, the 2021 census remaps, are a disgrace to democracy.

Budget. Illinois hasn’t had a balanced budget since 2001, when Republican George H. Ryan–yeah, Ryan was a bad guy–was governor and there was a GOP majority in the state Senate. In one of his first ads for his reelection campaign, Pritzker claimed the Prairie State’s budget is balanced. It’s not, unless you figure in trickery and federal COVID-19 bailout money. With a Republican majority a near certainty in the US House, Pritzker and the Democrats can’t count on bailout cash for Illinois’ next budget. 

Crime. While I’ll concede that governors don’t have much control over local law enforcement, if you think crime is bad in Illinois now, just wait until New Year’s Day, when Illinois’ no-cash bail law goes into effect–after the general election votes are counted this autumn. There are still instances when judges can lock up accused criminals. But of course, big time crooks also commit small time crimes. Petty crooks often move on to become big-time crooks. Cook County’s state’s attorney is Kim Foxx, a George Soros-funded pro-criminal so-called prosecutor. If Pritzker has ever criticized Foxx, I missed it. Pritzker signed the no-cash bail bill into law in February of 2021. If it’s such a good bill, then why didn’t no-cash bail go into effect immediately?

Last year Cook County, which included Chicago and it’s where I live, recorded over 1,000 murders for the first time since 1994.

COVID. The lockdowns in Illinois were among the longest and most severe. But his wife, M.K., and his daughter spent two months in Florida in the spring of 2020. Florida’s lockdown policies were less stringent. Pritzker claims that his family were in Florida before the pandemic was declared. But the governor didn’t reveal that information until two months later.

Stagnant population. Illinois had lost population, according to the US Census, every year since 2014. Or had it? But like late night ballots arriving in big-city polling places, the Census Bureau said, wait, no, Illinois gained population between 2010 and 2020. But growth, such as it is, can rightly be called anemic. 

Corruption. Until it appeared that the US Attorney’s office for Northern Illinois was finally closing in on Boss Michael Madigan, who was for decades the most powerful Democrat in the state, Pritzker was silent on the Illinois Democratic Party chair and longtime state House speaker. Only after a surprisingly lackluster 2020 general election for Prairie State Democrats did Pritzker issue a half-hearted call for Madigan to resign as speaker. The Boss failed to win reelection as House speaker last year and then he quickly resigned as Illinois Dem party chair. 

Three months ago, Madigan was indicted on numerous racketeering charges by the feds. Illinois is generally considered one of the most corrupt states in the Union. Even the Washington Post agrees. What is Pritzker doing to fight criminality by Illinois public officials? I can’t see any evidence that he is doing anything.

Toilets. Pritzker and his wife own two mansions on Astor Street on Chicago’s North Side. Allegedly looking for a property tax break, M.K. had the toilets removed from the one that Illinois’ future first couple didn’t live in. Then she had that mansion declared “uninhabitable,” so the Pritzkers could score that tax break. The Pritzkers later paid Cook County back the money from that sleazy move.

In 2019, Chicago’s NPR affiliate reported that the toilet scam was under federal investigation.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The Medicare morass

Posted: June 21, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

As I head toward retirement at the end of the month, my wife and I have had to delve into the Medicare morass.

Simply put, Medicare is one of the most confusing bureaucracies I’ve ever dealt with. Since I used to report on government bureaucracies, I thought I would have some expertise in cutting through the weeds.

For the most part, I was wrong.

For those who have yet to head into the Medicare morass, I pity you. For those who have managed to get through the barriers already, I applaud you and also pity you.

Medicare, run by the Social Security Administration, is one of the most complex organizations in the country, providing some form of hospital, medical, and drug coverage for millions of Americans, most of whom are 65 and older.

Here’s my story of banging my head against the Medicare walls.

I wanted to sign up for Medicare coverage a few months before I retired, and that’s tricky. I was able to sign up for Medicare, but I couldn’t tailor our coverage until one month before I retired.

That’s when the voluminous number of letters and responses started with Medicare. It appears that the organization doesn’t know how to use email or other forms of electronic correspondence.

I had to file three separate letters to Medicare to convince the minions that I was retiring.

I then was told my Medicare costs would be significantly higher for my wife and me because I earned more than I should in 2020. I had to appeal that decision, convincing the authorities that my retirement in June would mean I wouldn’t make as much money. That took two appeals—another set of letters and responses—until I finally returned to the original Medicare cost.

Then I decided to obtain a Medicare Advantage program from a private insurance company to ensure my wife and I got decent coverage for health issues and drugs. It’s rather strange since we don’t have many health issues.

The number of Medicare Advantage programs is voluminous and complicated. I still don’t truly understand the drug formula, known as the “donut,”—which is supposed to make it less costly the more drugs you have to use.

Most of my doctors take Medicare, but my chiropractor doesn’t. He finds it too costly to get paid by the government.

Our dentist doesn’t take Medicare. In fact, only a handful of dentists in our area take Medicare, so we added an extra dental plan at $109 a month.

For the past decade, I have had a Health Savings Account, which allowed us to save about 25 percent in taxes on the money spent for copays and other approved procedures that insurance plans didn’t cover. That saved us about $600 a year in taxes.

Medicare doesn’t allow such accounts. Although Congress has tried to pass such measures, not much has happened.

During the 2020 campaign, most Democrats called for “Medicare for All,” meaning that everyone would be brought under the umbrella of the health program. Since it’s estimated that Medicare may go bankrupt in a few years on its present course, it seems evident to me that would be a bad idea.

I’ll report later whether Medicare works for my wife and me. But I’ve added a few more gray hairs and seen my blood pressure rise during my lengthy attempt just to get signed up for the program.

The hero of Watergate: Frank Wills

Posted: June 14, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

As talking heads and journalistic wannabes pontificate about this week’s anniversary of the Watergate break-in and its aftermath, few will mention Frank Wills.

“If there is no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. But the next time, there may be no watchman in the night,” said U.S. Rep. James Mann (D-South Carolina) of the House Judiciary Committee as he cast his vote to impeach Richard Nixon.

Wills was that watchman at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972, when five men tried to plant electronic listening devices.

Then 24, Wills called the police after discovering that locks at the complex had been tampered with. Five men were arrested inside the Democratic headquarters, which triggered the Watergate scandal and eventually the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Although hailed as a hero, Wills spent much of his life jobless and in poverty.

Wills was born in Savannah, Georgia. His parents separated when he was a child, and he was raised by his mother, Margie. After dropping out of high school, Wills studied heavy machine operations in Battle Creek, Michigan, and earned his high school equivalency degree from the Job Corps. He found an assembly-line job at Ford in Detroit, Michigan, but had to give up the position because of asthma. Wills then traveled to Washington, D.C., and worked at several hotels before landing a job as a security guard at the Watergate complex.

On the night of June 17, 1972, Wills noticed a piece of duct tape on one of the door locks when he was making his rounds. The tape was placed over the latch to prevent the door from shutting. He removed the tape and continued his patrol. Thirty minutes later, Wills returned to the door and noticed there was more tape on the same door. Without hesitation, Wills called the police. 

The police turned off the elevators and locked the doors while accompanying Wills to search the offices one by one. Five men—all with ties to the Committee to Re-elect the President—were found in the offices and arrested. “When we turned the lights on, one person, then two persons, then three persons came out, and on down the line,” Wills recalled.

According to media reports, Wills quit his job because he did not receive a raise.

After his brief fame, Wills had difficulty keeping a job. He said in an interview that Howard University feared losing its federal funding if it hired him. A security job with Georgetown University did not last long. Also, he worked for a brief time for the comedian Dick Gregory.

In the mid-1970s, Wills settled in North Augusta, South Carolina, to care for his aging mother, who had suffered a stroke. Together, they survived on her Social Security checks of $450 a month. In 1979, Wills was convicted of shoplifting and fined $20. Four years later, he was convicted of shoplifting a pair of sneakers from a store in Augusta, Georgia, and served one year in prison. By the time of his mother’s death in 1993, Wills was so impoverished that he had to donate her body to medical research because he had no money to bury her.

Only when significant anniversaries of the Watergate break-in occurred did the media remember him for a bit. In 1992, on the 20th anniversary of the burglary, reporters asked if he would do it all over again. “That’s like asking me if I’d rather be white than black. It was just a part of destiny,” he replied.

At 52, Wills died in Augusta, Georgia, from a brain tumor with neither fame nor fortune–little more than a footnote in history. 

But he was the hero of Watergate. Without his actions, it’s unlikely anyone would know what the Nixon administration was up to. 

Leftists in their silo created the Ministry of Truth, Ultra MAGA, and Chicago’s Summer of Joy

Posted: May 29, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

On occasion I get accused of living in a right-wing silo, or if you prefer, bubble.

But it’s left-wingers who are more likely to dwell in their own political silo. And it’s hurting their side. 

Good.

And because many people, particularly leftists, are terrible listeners, I have to repeat myself yet again.

Here we go.

Even if I wanted to, I can’t remain in a right-wing silo. Besides–broadcast and cable media, as well as streaming services, are dripping wet with liberal and woke bias. And I can’t always avoid them. Last year, Mrs. Marathon Pundit underwent a minor medical procedure. In the waiting room I had to sit through ABC’s Good Morning America, hosted by Clintonista George Stephanopoulos, and then, on the same network, The View. 

Earlier this year I had some complicated dental work done. My dentist has TVs in front of each chair. What was on? The View. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was one of the show’s guests. 

“John,” my dentist calmly said to me as she drilled, “tell me if you experience pain.”

Conservatives–and if you are a regular viewer of MSNBC or CNN this will shock you–are more tolerant of people who hold opposing views.

It’s an old study, but Pew Research found that liberals were more likely to block or unfriend a conservative than the other way around. 

The mainstream media, the Biden White House, and big-city governments are leftist monocultures. Big tech too, but I’ll attack them again, I am sure, in a future blog post.

When you live in an echo chamber, you are bound to inadvertently come up with ideas that outsiders will mock. Or even, like a lit stick of dynamite with a long fuse, have them thrown back at you. 

Last month, a contender–and oh my, is the competition steep–for worst Biden cabinet member, Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, revealed the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board. Conservatives immediately pounced, and almost in unison, called the group “Orwellian” and labeled it “the Ministry of Truth,” which is where reluctant liar Winston Smith toiled in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. When it was revealed that a disinformationist, who had cast doubts on the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Nina Jankowicz, was the head of that panel, the Orwell analogy was complete. 

One rule of politics, one that the woke ignores because of what Ben Shapiro calls the left’s “unearned sense of moral superiority,” is that when (not if, because the right errs too) you make a whopper of a mistake, you must immediately correct it. So rather than eliminating the Disinformation Governance Board as soon as Mayorkas acknowledged its existence, “the Ministry of Truth” and Jankowicz dangled for three weeks. During that time the Orwellian memes of Jankowicz flooded social media, and an embarrassing TikTok video of Jankowicz, singing to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” emerged, which gained her the nickname Scary Poppins.

Anita Dunn, who in 2009 cited the genocidal Mao Tse-Tung as one of her favorite philosophers, which led to her departure from the Obama White House, worked on the 2020 Biden campaign. She was briefly a senior White House advisor to Biden. Dunn is said to have been behind the president’s recent use of not only MAGA as a pejorative, but the heretofore unheard moniker “Ultra MAGA.” Conservatives on social media immediately and proudly declared themselves as “Ultra MAGA,” mirroring the response in 2016 when Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump supporters “deplorables.” During a speech earlier this month, Biden referred to his predecessor as “the great MAGA king.” On Truth Social, Trump struck back with a Lord of the Rings-themed meme as he gleefully adopted the nickname.

If Dunn didn’t live in a left-wing bubble, she would have seen all of those snarky responses coming.   

On the local level, last month Chicago’s inept leftist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, declared that the summer of 2022 will be “the Summer of Joy.” John Kass has derisively referred to the Summer of Joy in several of his columns and he poked fun at it in his most recent podcast. Hey Jackass, the sarcastic yet accurate tabulator of Chicago murders and shootings, is selling Summer of Joy T-shirts and coffee cups. Now that Memorial Day weekend has arrived, every time there is a mass shooting in Chicago–and we only have to look back a few hours to find the most recent one–bloggers and right-leaning social media users will quip something along the lines of “Wow, here is more ‘Summer of Love’ Chicago carnage for you.”

All Lightfoot would have needed to prevent this mockery is to have a politically moderate advisor–she would never hire a conservative–who would be bold enough to say, “I don’t think ‘Summer of Love’ is a wise idea, and here’s why.”

As Mary Poppins, not Biden’s Scary Poppins, said in that classic movie, “Sometimes a person we love, through no fault of their own, can’t see past the end of his nose.”

Such is the status of liberalism in 2022.

Which is why it will be a glorious election season for the right this year.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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