Posts Tagged ‘history’

Nixon had his Saturday Night Massacre, Chicago’s mayor has his Friday Afternoon Massacre

Posted: October 6, 2024 by John Ruberry in education, News/opinion, politics
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Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson

By John Ruberry

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, who Johnson has blamed for Chicago’s problems, had his Saturday night massacre. Johnson has his Friday Afternoon Massacre.

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.

Johnson has been particularly cozy to some of city’s socialist aldermen. They were among his staunchest protecters after Branjo cancelled the city’s gunfire protection contract with ShotSpotter.

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.

Meanwhile, Johnson has other priorities. Today’s he’s campaigning for Kamala Harris in Las Vegas. Next week, ostensibly to bring business and tourism to Chicago, the mayor will be in London for the Bears game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

A memorable, for all the wrong reasons, 2024 Chicago White Sox season

Posted: September 29, 2024 by John Ruberry in baseball, Sports
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By John Ruberry

“The Mets have shown me more ways to lose than I even knew existed.” Casey Stengel, New York Mets manager in 1962. 

“I didn’t know there were this many ways to lose a ballgame.” John Schriffen, Chicago White Sox play-by-play announcer in 2024.

“It was a year that none of us anticipated,” Steve Stone, White Sox color analyst, during the last game of the season.

Last Friday night the Chicago White Sox made history in Detroit when they lost their MLB record 121st game. To add salt to the wounds, in the home broadcast booth, Chicago area native Jason Benetti, who was the South Siders’ play-by-play announcer from 2019 thru 2023, called the game for the Tigers. According to media reports, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who has been, deservedly so, cast as the villain on the South Side, didn’t like the serendipitous and a bit quirky broadcasting style of Benetti, who is now the television voice of the Tigers.

When your team sucks, Jerry, an announcer like Benetti is just what is needed. Besides, I thought Jason was great. 

While I didn’t make it out to Guaranteed Rate Field for a Sox home game—lots of stuff came up–I viewed many games on television.

And it was bizarre watching.

After I’d miss a few games, I’d tune in and see an unfamiliar player at bat or on the pitchers’ mound. A lot. 

By the end of July, it was as if the team plane for the White Sox had crashed, killing the entire roster.  Of course that’s exaggeration, but there was an incredible amount of turnover this season as general manager Chris Getz and team manager Pedro Grifol, tried to patch holes on the sinking ship.

Who is that guy? Where did he come from? Those are questions I asked a lot when tuning in to White Sox baseball.

Grifol didn’t survive August. Few managers do after losing 21 straight games—and that tied an American League record, set by the Baltimore Orioles in 1988.

Here’s an interesting fact. Larry Sheets, an outfielder for those awful O’s, is the father of Gavin Sheets, an outfielder and first baseman for the Sox.

Why were the Sox so bad in 2024? Bad luck? Perhaps. Injuries? A bit. But in a 162-game season, even the best teams hit an unlucky patch or two. All teams in all sports have injuries. 

The short answer is that the White Sox farm system has been bereft of talent for years, save for “white flag” mid-season trades of established players with expensive contracts in exchange for prospects. The last number one Sox draft pick who has justifiably been called an MLB standout was shortstop Tim Anderson, the 2019 American League batting champion and a two-time all-star. Anderson was drafted eleven years ago. He’s out of baseball now. The following year the Sox drafted Carlos Rodón in the first round, he now hurls for the New York Yankees. Rodón is a two-time all-star who pitched a no-hitter in 2021. He comes close to stardom, but again, Rodón was drafted ten years ago.

In this afternoon’s game against the Tigers, there was a typical White Sox boneheaded error. Stone remarked that “communication issues” have been a problem all year for Chicago. A Detroit pinch hitter, Andy Ibáñez, hit a routine foul pop-up that soared near the visitors’ dugout. Sox first baseman, Andrew Vaughn, yelled “I got it” repeatedly. But Pale Hose catcher Korey Lee ran towards the pop-up too. Neither caught the ball, it landed between them.

Of the White Sox players with enough at-bats to qualify for a batting average crown, Vaughn ended up with the highest average at .246. That made him the 88th best batter in MLB in 2024

I hate to single out Vaughn, but he played a big role in one of the most bizarre endings of an MLB game ever. He was called for interference on an infield fly rule play, concluding a game against the Orioles with a double play.

Take a look.

Schriffen pointed to this defeat when making that comment about his naiveté on the many ways to lose a baseball game.

There is some good news for the South Siders. If you are a “there is a no such thing as bad publicity” type, for the first time since the White Sox won the World Series in 2005, they’re no longer playing in the shadow of the more popular Chicago Cubs. They’re getting national attention.

Secondly, the Sox, who lost 101 games last year, didn’t finish last in the AL Central in 2023. The Kansas City Royals lost 106 games a year ago–and they made the playoffs this season. That being said, if you believe that the White Sox will play in the post season in 2025, which by the way will be their 125th annual effort, I have some Enron stock to sell you. Getz has already said that the Sox won’t be a big factor in the off-season free agency market.

Thirdly, unless the Pale Hose break the record again next season, its “worst ever” record might be broken soon by someone else. In the 21st century, there have been several teams, most notoriously the 2003 Detroit Tigers who lost 119 games, who have challenged the Mets’ 1962 woeful performance. The 2018 Orioles tanked 115 times. The Tigers had another very rough year in 2019, losing 114 times.

The Orioles and Tigers will be joining the Royals in this year’s playoffs.

Lastly, the White Sox finished the 2024 season winning five of its last six games, including today’s game in Detroit. Interim manager Grady Sizemore might have made a difference–and he could return next year.

UPDATE 8:30pm EDT:

During the White Sox-Tigers game, Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf issued a long statement where he admitted that the South Siders “on-field performance this season was a failure.”

From that statement:

While embracing new ideas and outside perspectives, we will do everything we can to fix this for 2025 and the future. This will include further development of players on our current roster, development within our system, evaluating the trade and free agent markets to improve our ballclub and new leadership for our analytics department, allowing us to elevate and improve every process within our organization with a focus for competing for championships. In fact, change has already been happening in our baseball operations group throughout this past year. When named general manager in 2023, Chris Getz and his staff immediately began conducting a top-to-bottom evaluation of our existing operations. Chris is rebuilding the foundation of our baseball operations department, with key personnel changes already happening in player development, international scouting, professional scouting and analytics. Some of these changes will be apparent quickly while others will need time to produce the results we all want to see at the major-league level.

Great words, these are.

But Getz’ “top-to-bottom evaluation of our existing operations” that he began over a year ago has seen the White Sox, a bad team then, get much worse.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Under the Fedora: An Accurate Assessment, DA Bragg’s priorities, So Bad even the MSM can’t spin it, An idiot no longer Useful, Stacy on Susan Wojcicki

Posted: August 16, 2024 by datechguy in education, election 2024, immigration, the courts, under the fedora
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This assessment of the situation in England is better than anything else I’ve read

Not since 1066 has a government in my land so hated and despised the people it rules, and been so determined to enslave, reduce, deny, exploit and destroy them. What is happening with mass immigration, with unacknowledged but real Muslim conquest, and with erasure from both the history books and the streets, represents a deliberate attempt to expunge a distinct people from the world, to consign them solely to history. And if you don’t believe that is true, visit the parts of Birmingham or London or Bradford where it has already happened, and find me an Englishman there.

There is also an excellent bit of history about the Norman Conquest and its aftermath well worth your time.

The difference between how DA Allen Bragg treats people who are considered a danger to Democrat re-election efforts vs a danger to police or innocent Jews is illustrated here:

James Carlson, who also goes by Cody, burned an Israeli flag, violently stormed Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, clashed with a facilities worker, and allegedly broke a police camera while detained. He was arrested on April 20 on a misdemeanor arson charge and again on April 30, the day that New York City police swept Columbia and cleared Hamilton Hall, for burglary, a felony in New York.

By the time Carlson and other Hamilton Hall arrestees attended their June court hearings, however, the Manhattan district attorney’s office—led by Alvin Bragg—opted to pursue a reduced charge against Carlson: criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor. As a result, Carlson, a trust fund kid who specializes in animal rights law and lists his $2.3 million Brooklyn townhouse on his active New York attorney registration, faces little risk of losing his license.

Via Hotair. Never forget that if Trump was the pre 2015 Trump who was not consider a threat to Democrats holding power his case would never have seen the light of day.

How Bad was the Walz Pick by Kamala Harris, this bad:

Two things to remember about this story:
  1. The Walz pick was the first decision made by Kamala as the Democrat candidate for president.
  2. This is the same media that has done their level best to raise up and protect Harris from the moment Biden was forced out.

Almost more interesting is the media sudden volte face on Hunter Biden.

A CNN panel reacted on Wednesday to the news that Hunter Biden reportedly sought help from the U.S. government for a possibly financially beneficial energy project in Italy while his father was vice president, and said it felt “very strange.” 

“This isn‘t great. Hunter Biden, everybody in the White House has known for a long time, is an issue. The way that his lawyers responded to this disclosure saying, ‘Well, yeah, he sent letters but did nothing wrong.’ This feels very strange to people that the vice president‘s son was sending letters or making requests to other government officials and saying, ‘Hey, would you meet with this company?’,” CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere said.

The killer quote however is this:

“One of the other things The New York Times reports here is that this document was suddenly shaken loose from the U.S. bureaucracy of the week that President Biden dropped out of the race,” CNN host Kasie Hunt said. “They claim it’s a coincidence.”

It’s amazing what can happen when an idiot is no longer useful

Math and Logic are important and Stacy McCain notes both with discussing the COVID Vaccines and the death of former Youtube Boss who was in charge when I was kicked off the platform:

My point is that two things can be simultaneously true: (1) the COVID-19 vaccines inflicted no serious harm on the vast majority of patients who got vaccinated against the virus, and (2) there are many thousands of people who suffered serious side effects of the vaccines, including hundreds who died as a result of getting vaccinated. You don’t need any expertise in epidemiology to ujnderstand this; it’s just simple math.

OK, so it is probably just a coincidence that pro-vaccine fanatic Susan Wojcicki died of lung cancer at age 56, a little more than three years after the COVID vaccines became available. For my friend to suggest that it was “turbo cancer” is not justified by any available evidence, and it’s probably impolite even to discuss it.

But is it wrong? Well, I can’t say that for certain, and neither can you. Logic requires that we reserve judgment when encountering the unknown, and mRNA vaccines are so new that potential side effects are definitely in the realm of the unknown.

The math is simple:

If you tell me, for example, that mRNA vaccines have been proven 99.9% safe, what you’re actually telling me is, one in 1,000 patients will suffer serious side effects. And if you’re going to administer such vaccines to many millions of people, simple multiplication tells you that there will be a thousand “bad” cases for every million of patients who get the vaccine.

As far as the death of Ms Wojcicki all I know for sure is she was loved by God and Christ died for her sins along with everyone else’s. I hope and pray that she took advantage of said mercy when offered.

I also know that you should subscribe to Stacy McCain’s substack.

Journalists should be forced to wear clown suits

Posted: August 11, 2024 by John Ruberry in election 2024, elections, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

In the words of George Romney, father of Mitt, American voters are in the midst of “the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get.”

Romney, who was then the governor of Michigan, was a leading contender for the 1968 Republican nomination when he made his “brainwashing” gaffe.

Leaders, let alone presidents, don’t allow themselves to be brainwashed. Well, Joe Biden has, but what’s left of his mind was washed away at Rehoboth Beach.

Getting brainwashed by clowns is even more humiliating. I’ll get to them in a little bit.

Our ongoing mass brainwashing, although now it’s usually called gaslighting, began, as Mollie Hemingway tells us, with the lamestream media covering up Joe Biden’s senility in 2020.

“There is nothing mainstream about the so-called mainstream media,” Hemingway said last week. “They are far-left. They tend to help [Kamala Harris] out with her politics. But it reminds me so much of what we saw in the 2020 race when Joe Biden was allowed, through the complete help of that corporate media, to run his campaign from the basement … The result of that is that we have a country and world in chaos.”

There was a three-week respite from the gaslighting by the media this summer, when the self-appointed puppet masters decided Senile Joe had to go, and they finally reported on his dementia. Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democrats’ presidential ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris, is an empty pantsuit. Her greatest skill, is something that can only be accomplished in the public sector, is failing upwards.

Move ahead in our Wayback Machine from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. This election is almost forgotten now, but Dianne Feinstein, who succeeded George Moscone as mayor of San Franciso, ran for a full-term in 1979. She won in the runoff, but the first round of voting bears noting. In his leftist agitprop campaign, Jello Biafra, the lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, a punk rock band, astonishingly finished in fourth place with 3-percent of the vote.

Oddly enough, Harris’ base is San Franciso, her first election win occurred in the 2003 district attorney race.

But I have the media in mind for this blog post.

Part of Biafra’s mayoral platform, with one change, needs to be put in place, nationally. 

The punk rocker favored forcing business leaders to wear clown suits. Instead, I support requiring journalists to don clown costumes. Because they are clowns–evil ones, that is.

Before that happens, politely and within the law, we need to confront these liars and clowns, whether in person, on social media, or by email, and let them know we are well past believing their gaslighting.

As they did with Biden’s senility, the lamestream media is ignoring or minimizing the reporting on Harris’ far-left record, including her opposition to fracking–a spokesperson recently walked that one back–her support of spending less money on law enforcement, and her backing of a what the leftists call single-payer health care, which means the elimination of our private healthcare system.

And since Harris refuses to do sit-down interviews–the media is squelching that story too–the vice president can’t be confronted with questions about her unpopular political positions.

By the way, what kind of journalists aren’t clamoring for public figures to speak to them?

Clown-type journalists, that’s who. Frauds who put three-card monte dealers to shame.

After Donald Trump’s upset win over Hillary Clinton, there was a collective, and yes, welcome response by the media along the lines of, “We didn’t get it right in the Trump-Clinton election and we refused to take Trump supporters seriously–but we’re going to reach out to them, so we don’t make the same mistake again.”

Well, that attitude lasted about two weeks. Then the corporate media leftists, the clowns, hitched their out-of-date wagon to the Trump-Russia collusion lie.

The time for reproachment with the mainstream media is over. Journalists, most of them, need to find another line of work. Yes, of course, learning to code is an option for them. I’ve been on the wrong side of receiving pink slips, I know too well the pain of losing a job. But I was earning an honest living when I whenever I was let go.

And not only has the time arrived to confront the lamestream media, but the moment is also here to cancel your subscriptions to publications that repeatedly insult the public with disinformation and yes, brainwashing.

An aside: Here in Illinois, there is a bill on the desk of our Democrat governor, J.B. Pritzker, that will offer taxpayer-funded subsidies to state newspapers. It’s a terrible idea, which means of course Pritzker will sign the subsidy bill. Besides, Pritzker’s party benefits the most from our dishonest media. He’ll be helping out his pals and political allies.

But government subsidies will not save newspapers and other mainstream media outlets. The market for honest media has moved on. Besides, when government gets involved with business, it always picks the losers. And the media, especially in hellholes like Illinois, is playing their fellow wokesters, who at best, make up 20 percent of the population. We are a center-right country.

Send away the clowns. I’ll be leading the laughing when that happens.

Replace them with real journalists.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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