Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's magnificent seven’

Let’s go Brandon: a violent start to Brandon Johnson’s Chicago mayoralty

Posted: June 4, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

By all accounts, crime was the biggest issue in this year’s Chicago mayoral election. Voters in America’s third-largest city had a choice between two Democrats in the runoff matchup in April, Paul Vallas, a moderate who ran on a law-and-order agenda, and Brandon Johnson, who until late last year was a defund-the-police advocate.

Johnson won and he was sworn in as Chicago’s 57th mayor on May 15. 

But his brief time as mayor-elect was rough. While Johnson of course denounced a late April downtown flash-mob riot, he did so with a caveat, declaring that the riotous thugs “shouldn’t be demonized,” even though they acted demonically. A few days later outside Illinois’ state capitol building, Johnson doubled down on his naivete, explaining his feelings about the rioters, “They’re young. Sometimes they make silly decisions.”

A big test for any Chicago mayor is Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer is also traditionally when violence ramps up. 

One new wrinkle for this year’s holiday weekend was implementation of yellow-vested “peacekeepers” to control the mayhem, including 30 funded by the state. While I don’t believe Johnson dispatched any of his own peacekeepers, he’s on board with the concept. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, Johnson’s not even been mayor for a month, but if Memorial Day weekend’s crime fighting results are any indication, Chicago is in for a tough four years.

The last weekend in May was Chicago’s most violent Memorial Day weekend since 2016–eleven people were shot to death, 42 others were wounded, and one woman was beaten to death. Let’s take a closer look at that last one. The deceased was brutally and fatally beaten with a baseball bat two blocks from Johnson’s West Side home–the alleged murderer lives across the street from the mayor.

The beating victim and nine of the eleven weekend shooting victims were killed last Saturday. Only Hey Jackass Chicago among the local media noticed that it was one of the few double-digit murder days in the last decade the city has suffered. 

Now, back to the yellow-donned peacekeepers. The concept is ripe for a parody. For instance, on my own blog, I noted that Leslie Barbara, one of the less imposing cadets of the motley class in “Police Academy,” was wearing a yellow blazer when he was tossed by hooligans into a river from a bridge–along with his photo kiosk. The aforementioned Hey Jackass Chicago is selling official peacekeeper T-shirts on the “Buy Crap” section of its website.

One of those real peacekeepers, whom a veteran of the Obama administration hilariously defended as someone who “mishandled the stress” of being a peacekeeper, was arrested after allegedly beating and robbing a man. The accused, an ex-con who was on parole, was allegedly in the process of removing his yellow peacekeeper vest as the cops approached him.

Okay, skeptics may object and tell me that Memorial Day weekend was just one weekend, and a long one at that. What about this weekend?

Well, as of 9am Sunday morning Chicago time, nine people have been shot to death this weekend so far and at least 33 others wounded. Included in those numbers is mass shooting in Johnson’s neighborhood in Austin, where one person was killed and six others were wounded.

Let’s go Brandon!

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Youngkin being a great governor

Posted: June 3, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in culture
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While Glenn Youngkin was running for governor, there were more than a few skeptics that said he was going to be super-squishy on a lot of issues. That was not an unfair criticism, given how poorly so many Republican politicians turned out to be on issues of real importance. Thankfully, Youngkin has turned out to be pretty darn good.

Governor Glenn Youngkin Waves at Crowd at ITAC (Industrial Turnaround Corporation), May 31, 2023. Official Photo by Christian Martinez, Office of Governor Glenn Youngkin.

Yesterday his efforts finally hit the news when he removed the bachelor degree requirements for nearly 90 percent of state jobs. That’s a big deal. Bloated job requirements are a nuisance and make it difficult to hire and fill positions. Most of these positions are better served by someone with a credential instead of a degree. It’s also important to note that our higher education system tends to lean Democrat, so this should make it easier for Republicans that chose to not subject themselves to 4 years of Democrat indoctrination to obtain meaningful employment.

Sadly, more than a few trolls at Instapundit are simply saying this will make it easier to insert particular demographics into government. I seriously doubt it. Combined with his assault on DIE institutions and rules, this should open up jobs to constituents everywhere, and this move in particular was viewed favorably by a few Democrat lawmakers.

It doesn’t end there though, because Youngkin is addressing hundreds of individual issues. He passed legislation making it easier to adopt children. If you recall, that’s an area where losers in the system make it hard for good couples to adopt by making them jump through hoops that normal parents would never be subjected to. It’s a real issue I’ve discussed before, so its nice to see the governor care enough to work to fix it.

On top of that, Youngkin has signed good budgets, mental health initiatives, and credentialing plans to make it easier for people to transfer credentials into the state without additional testing. These don’t tend to make the news, but for the average Virginian, they are issues that affect them every day, so they make a difference.

I’m glad he’s doing this. We’ve had a fair share of Republicans that run on big issues like abortion and Second Amendment, but then ignore the normal day-to-day issues that aren’t big news. While its great to say you “fought the woke mob,” at the end of the day, I also want my day-to-day issues to get better. Passing sound budgets and making Virginia a state desirable to live and work in affects my family directly. Hopefully with more success we’ll have other Republicans wake up and take similar efforts in their states.

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.

One tiny Christian college is fighting the good fight against  Biden’s transgender insanity

Posted: June 1, 2023 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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The political left are a rather tyrannical lot.  Their primary function in life is to force everyone else to follow their warped and twisted world view. Their preferred mode of operation is to infect all levels of government with their ideology, then use government force to coerce everyone else to follow their madness. 

Transgenderism is the most perfect example of this.  Progressives have been using government coercion to try and ensure everyone in the United States plays along with this mass psychosis.

It is bad enough when progressives cram this ideology down the throats of ordinary Americans.  It is absolutely unconscionable when they force religious institutions to comply because that would be a very direct violation of the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.

This headline made me nauseous when is first read it.  It also made be happy because this small college was fighting back: Tiny Christian College Goes on Offensive as Biden Tries Forcing Female Students to Share Dorm Rooms – Even Showers – with Men (westernjournal.com)

In one of his first official acts in the Oval Office, Biden signed an executive order that redefined the terms “sex,” “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

Three weeks later, Biden’s Department of Housing and Urban Development issued new rules requiring schools to open their women’s dormitories — showers and all — to men who “identify” as women.

No exemptions were allowed, even for religious institutions.

The colleges justification for fighting back was right on point.

The Christian college, located in Point Lookout, Missouri, filed a lawsuit against Biden and his administration, arguing that the historical interpretation of the Fair Housing Act confirms that “sex” means biological sex.

The college also argued that not only does the Biden executive order violate the school’s constitutional right to “operate consistently with their religious beliefs,” but also that there should have been a public notice and comment period before such a drastic change was made.

This next quote proves just how far from the original meaning of the Constitution the entire federal court system has shifted.

In September, a three-judge panel from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the case and denied a petition for the matter to be heard by the full court.

College of the Ozarks and its law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, responded in February by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

This next paragraph fills me with hope.

Recognizing the high stakes involved in the case, a number of other Christian colleges have submitted friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the suit brought by the College of the Ozarks. Nineteen states and numerous advocacy groups have done likewise.

The mainstream media was wrong about Bud Light: Boycotts work

Posted: May 28, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, culture, media, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

We’re approaching the two-month mark of the Bud Light boycott, which of course began when transgender social media, utilizing his–yes his–goofy 1950s-sitcom ditz schtick to recklessly promote Bud Light beer. 

Immediately, I was confident that this boycott had staying power, despite the increasingly irrelevant mainstream media telling its dwindling audience it did not. As Da Tech Guy himself explained, Anheuser-Busch’s problem is that Bud Light is too easy to boycott. Coors Light, Miller Lite, which taste similar–assuming that light beers have a distinguishable taste–are usually available in the same liquor stores, supermarkets, bars, and restaurants. And they are all priced about the same. 

American megabrewers are selling image and personality. Beer? Not so much. And in a few days, Bud Light, after partnering with Mulvaney, torched its macho brand-building work of four decades in just a few days. “Fratty” is the word used by the now-on-leave marketing head for Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid. Anheuser-Busch’s non-apology from its CEO only fanned the flames. 

Bud Light’s slogan is, “Easy to drink, easy to enjoy.” And it’s easy to boycott.

I have to reach back to Monty Python’s Flying Circus to find a worse marketing campaign. 

Boss (John Cleese character): Now, let’s have a look at the sales chart (indicates a plummeting sales graph). When you took over this account, Frog (Eric Idle character), Conquistador was a brand leader. Here you introduced your first campaign, “Conquistador Coffee brings a new meaning to the word vomit.” Here you made your special introductory offer of a free dead dog with every jar, and this followed your second campaign “the tingling fresh coffee which brings you exciting new cholera, mange, dropsy, the clap, hard pad, and athlete’s head. From the House of Conquistador.”

Yeah, I know, Bud Light’s Mulvaney campaign hasn’t been, so far, as awful for Anheuser-Busch as it was for the fictional Monty Python coffee brand. But sales of the beer continue to slide. Last week, by way of a $15 mail-in rebate, A-B started giving the beer away, because, unlike wine and hard liquor, beer has a brief shelf-life. 

So, yes, boycotts can be effective. 

But we were told by the mainstream media that boycotts don’t work.

Here a few examples of that wrongness:

Six weeks ago, ABC News’ Max Zahn and Kiara Alfonseca cautioned us about boycotts, “However, the campaigns rarely succeed in hurting a company’s sales or influencing its decision making.”

Around that same time, Patrick Coffee (no relation to Python’s Conquistador Coffee) of the Wall Street Journal, while citing other experts, opined that about the Bud Light boycott that “such campaigns often have failed to deliver a meaningful blow.” (Paid subscription might be required to access the link.)

Citing “research,” and of course falling back on “experts,” Becky Sullivan of NPR warned us “that other social media-fueled boycotts were short-lived.”

So where are the finger-waving fact-checkers? Why haven’t these articles been revised?

Meanwhile, Target is facing a boycott over its prominent promotions of “tuck-friendly,” that is, male-genitilia-hiding, swimsuits, as well as arguably promoting the trans agenda to children. It has lost $10 billion in market valuation since a boycott began against Target. 

Such a move is now called “Bud Lighting.”

This won’t be the last time that I say, when you get woke you go broke.

And it won’t be the last time I point out instances where the mainstream media was wrong.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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