Posts Tagged ‘datechguy's 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.

Renaming the Stennis is dumb

Posted: June 25, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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If you don’t follow the U.S. Naval Institute, you could be forgiven for not knowing that there are a lot of articles written by Naval Officers thinking about the future of seapower. Some are good, some are not, but the fact that we continue to have officers that at least think about the future is a good sign. Unfortunately, the USNI articles have morphed from thinking about integrating cyber in future maritime conflicts to increasingly focusing on cultural issues. The latest in this string of articles that includes delving into the LGBTQ culture of Newport, RI, and looking at the Confederate connections in the Naval Academy is a proposal to rename the USS JOHN C STENNIS (JCS).

The JCS is named after Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, the last Democrat Senator from that state and one of the longest serving Senators in US history. Senator Stennis has an interesting history, and LCDR (ret) Reuben Green focuses on racist comments that he made in 1956 along with his criminal behavior as trial prosecutor in Brown vs Mississippi. The fact that John Stennis was racist isn’t up for debate, and neither is the fact that racism is wrong. The notion that to correct this we need to rename the JCS when she pulls in for a refit though is stupid.

Anytime we name anything after a human being, its going to cause controversy. The Navy named a replenishment oiler after Harvey Milk, who took plenty of controversial actions, including outing the homosexuality of a Marine that acted to save President Ford’s life for his own political gain. We also have a USS Gabrielle Giffords, who voted in favor of limiting sales of assault weapons, which more than a few military members own and use without issue in their personal lives.

Any human being we’re going to name ships after is going to offend someone. Should we rename the USNS Maury, who despite contributing much to the study of weather and oceanography, fought in the Confederate Navy? Or the USNS Cesar Chavez, who advocated against immigration? Should we look deeper into the Kennedy family, which has plenty of skeletons in the closet and has two ships named after John and Robert Kennedy?

There are two ways to solve this. The first is to try and pick completely non-controversial names. We can name ships after battles, cities, states and even fish (which might include bumblebees if you’re a resident of California). The other option is to continue naming ships after people, with the understanding that sometimes these people will let you down. Especially with an increasing digital trail that follows everyone, its likely that anyone in the future will have said something controversial that was captured in a video, social media post or a published article.

This brings up a larger question: As a society, can we accept that people are multi-faceted and will have things we both like and dislike about them? I want to answer “Yes” to this question. While Martin Luther King Jr. had extra-marital affairs that I don’t agree with, he should be celebrated for his work in desegregating America. I can accept that Matthew Maury was a brilliant scientist that advanced our understanding of weather and oceanography while also disagreeing with his choice to serve in the Confederate Navy.

We become less human when we attempt to create binary heroes that are all good or all bad. Renaming the JCS would open the door to renaming other ships, creating a very political process that will sway depending on who is in power, and is a door best left shut.

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.

The bungled response by the Uvalde Police Department keeps looking worse as more details emerge

Posted: June 23, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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The more I learn about the police response by the Uvalde Police Department during the tragic shooting, the more infuriated an nauseated I become. 

This headline is beyond maddening, Uvalde Cops Made No Attempt To Open the Door Where the Gunman Was Shooting 19 Kids (townhall.com)

According to the San-Antonio Express News, video footage shows that law enforcement allegedly never even attempted to open the door of the elementary school where a gunman barricaded himself in a classroom for 77 minutes while police stood outside. 

“Surveillance footage shows that police never tried to open a door to two classrooms at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in the 77 minutes between the time a gunman entered the rooms and massacred 21 people and officers finally breached the door and killed him,” the paper reported. 

There is also reason to believe the door was unlocked to the building, making it easy for law enforcement to enter the school. 

I never believed such incompetence was possible, especially in police departments.  This incompetence has a tragically high body count.

The timidity of the leadership of the Uvalde Police Department is just as shocking and infuriating as the incompetence.

It just kepps getting  worse: Uvalde Shooting Could Have Been Stopped In Three Minutes – Louder With Crowder

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw addressed a Texas state senate hearing today. He had more details than the last time we heard from him. Most notably that the shooter could have been put down in three minutes, as opposed to the one hour and fourteen minutes it took.

McGraw testified that, within three minutes, there were enough officers armed and armored up to “isolate, distract, and neutralize” the shooter. The only thing stopping them was the on-scene commander who never made the call.

The security lapses that led up to the shooting were just as infuriating. and far more tragic because this entire tragedy could have been prevented, Uvalde Officials Leave School Unlocked, Ignored Classroom Lock Maintenance Shooting (breitbart.com)

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw revealed critical school safety violations that contributed to the shooter being able to access the Robb Elementary School building and classrooms. The district also failed to correct at least one maintenance issue that kept the specific classroom door where the shooting took place from being lockable.

DPS Director Colonel McCraw told the Texas Senate on Tuesday that the south and west doors were placed into an unlocked setting, State Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) told Breitbart Texas Tuesday. The doors were routinely left unlocked in direct violation of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s school safety directive, he related.

Report from Louisiana: A Generic Economy

Posted: June 20, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – A few days ago on this blog, datechguy wrote about a favorite local business that was a casualty of the Biden economy:

In the grand scheme of things it’s just one more business that has gone under thanks to the Biden Administration Economy and the steal of the last election. It’s just a few more jobs lost by people who worked there for decades, it’s just one more person whose decades of hard work building a business has gone for naught. Nobody in Washington will note it, it will not make the NY Time or the Washington Post or the TV news nor will those in the administration which insists we have a booming economy notice that it is gone.

Y’all. I could have written this myself because the same thing happened to me this week and I know it’s happening all over the country. I know it is.

One of my favorite local businesses is Champagne’s Bakery located in Henderson, Louisiana on the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin. The business began 134 years ago in Breaux Bridge and is known for their French bread which they sell wholesale to a large percentage of restaurants in the Acadiana region. At the bakery in Henderson, when the bread is fresh and hot, a flashing light like a siren will spin wildly on their sign. It’s a landmark!

Champagne’s (pronounced SHAM-pines)  is known for their trademark “pink cookies.” They are about the size of a quarter and are little sandwich cookies with icing as the filling. They are just the right size to pop into your mouth whole. During Mardi Gras they make them in purple and green; during football season you can get them in LSU purple and gold or Ragin’ Cajuns red. But always there are pink ones. They are delicious!

When the bakery announced on social media last week that they were closing, a large number of shocked commentors lamented the loss of the pink cookie.

A local radio station reached out to the owner for an explanation:

Paul said that, like most places, the bakery took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Business slowed, but Paul said it wasn’t terrible.

The bakery was still recovering from the pandemic and things were looking pretty good until, he says,  the economy began to turn.

When I pressed him for more, he said that inflation is killing the business.

3 years ago, Paul was paying around $15 for a case of eggs. Today, he is paying around $60. A few years ago, shortening for the baker cost Paul about $28 for shortening. Today, that same package of shortening sets him back $90.

Who can survive increases like that?!

Not to mention that when we were there two weeks ago, they were having trouble getting supplies in because of trucking woes. Their suppliers couldn’t get their goods to them. Smaller trucking companies are having to lay people off and make adjustments of their own; look at the diesel prices to figure that one out.

So, yes, I’m mad that I’m losing my favorite bakery. I’m even more mad that another, yet ANOTHER, local mom ‘n pop business is going under, a casualty of the Biden economy. But what really bothers me is where this is going to end. The WalMarts are going to survive. They’ll be here forever. Most of your chain restaurants are going to survive too. But soon you’re going to lose the local flavor, and even part of the culture, of what makes your area unique.

You’ll have to participate in hyper-capitalism to get anything done, to buy goods and materials, to eat.

Our local diners, those that are left, are struggling. They’re raising prices, they’re closing a couple of days a week, they’re struggling to find employees. They have to take what they can get from the labor force and it’s often lackluster.

I diverge from my point a bit, but really, where is this going to end?

In The Advocate this morning was an article about struggling shrimpers; fishing is a major source of livelihood for people in south Louisiana but rising fuel prices are contributing to the demise of that for a lot of fishermen.

Where does it all end? What will out economy and our culture look like at the end of this?

The loss of our local bakeries, restaurants, diners, and shops will soon mean our country is generic from one end to the other. You won’t be able to tell New Orleans from San Francisco.

Maybe I exaggerate, but not by much.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and at Medium; she is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

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