Posts Tagged ‘john ruberry’

Fact-checkers are gaslighting Americans over definition of a recession

Posted: July 31, 2022 by John Ruberry in business, economy, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“The fliparoo theory of PolitiFact is now confirmed,” Dan Bongino said early in his July 28 podcast, “The fliparoo theory is this: If a fact-checker, airquotes, PolitiFact, says something is true it is probably false. If PolitiFact says something is false it’s probably true.”

Which means, of course, that we are now in a recession. PolitiFact, in a piece written by propagandist Louis Jacobson entitled, “No, the White House didn’t change the definition of ‘recession,'” he fact-checked a claim that originally came from an Instagram post. In seemingly 10,000 words, meant to overwhelm low-information voters, Jacobson ruled that statement false.

Jacobson is wrong, he’s gaslighting us. We are in a recession.

And Jacobson is not alone.

The Biden White House, led by the embarrassment of a press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, has been redefining “recession” for at least a week. For decades, the generally accepted definition of a recession has been two successive months of negative GDP growth. In the first quarter of 2022, the American economy shrank by 1.4 percent, and it contracted by 0.9 percent in the second quarter. These are facts. 

“However, the two-quarter threshold cited in the Instagram post has never been official,” Jacobson said in his so-called fact-check. “It’s more like a rough guide,” he continued, “one piece of a complicated puzzle.” Translation: the wise and oh-so-brilliant Jacobson is right, and you are a semi-literate yokel for accepting the commonly agreed upon description of a recession. 

In another overly long fact-check, Newsweek’s Tom Norton, another hack apologist, also ruled “false” the claim that the Biden White House is redefining what a recession is. “Furthermore, the White House website doesn’t have a dictionary or catalog of all political terminology and jargon it uses (that is the case for other governments, such as those of the UK and Canada, too),” Norton offered. 

Wow. I’m convinced. Not.

In Norton’s Newsweak–or is it Newspeak?— fact-check, Norton quotes Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen, who, by the way, was wrong about inflation being “transitory,” that it is really up to a secretive private organization to determine a recession. Who knew? “There is an organization called the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at a broad range of data in deciding whether or not there is a recession,” she revealed.

Another fact-check fabulist, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, appears to be on vacation so he hasn’t weighed in on the leftist-induced recession debate. Three years ago, while fact-checking Donald Trump, Kessler wrote, “A recession is two quarters of negative economic growth.” But Joe Biden wasn’t president then.

Another prominent (along the lines of someone having an ugly prominent nose) fact-checker, USA Today, also hasn’t recently given its opinion on what a recession really is. Oh, what’s this? In a 2020 fact-check USA Today informed us, “A recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP, or gross domestic product, a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced during a specific time period.”

But on the other hand, Snopes is bowing to the Democrat Party mantra about recessions. Referring to a couple of social media messages, “The tweets quoted above may give readers the misleading impression that the Biden administration literally tried to revise the criteria economists use to determine when a recession has occurred. But that was not the case,” Bethania Palma chimes in for Snopes.

It is the case. Snopes is lying.

Here are some media talking heads talking not too long ago, based on who I see here and the chyrons, using the classical definition of a recession, in a montage compiled by the Media Research Center. You know the, you know the thing, as Biden likes to say, two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth. C’mon man!

But, assuming briefly we are not in a recession when will we be in one? The Biden administration won’t say. Is it a recession when we have three successive quarters of declining growth? Four? Five-and-a-half?

Or will it be a recession only when there is a Republican president?

Dan Bongino is right. The fliparoo theory of “fact-checkers” is now confirmed. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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.

Review: Season 2 of Capitani

Posted: July 17, 2022 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment
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By John Ruberry

Earlier this month the second season of the Luxembourgish crime drama Capitani began streaming on Netflix. 

In the first season, set in 2019, the titular character, gruff and laconic police detective Luc Capitani (Luc Schiltz) arrives in the fictional small northern Luxembourg of town of Manscheid to investigate the murder of an identical twin teen girl. Similar to British crime series Broadchurch, Luc Capitani is confronted by clannish locals who are harboring secrets. Capitani meets an old flame in Manscheid, Carla Pereira (Brigitte Urhausen)–her presence might have been the real reason for his visit to the village.

The following paragraphs contain a Season One spoiler. 

At the end of Episode 12, after solving the case of the murdered twin, Capitani is arrested for the murder of a drug lord that happened years earlier, a crime in which Pereira is entangled in. At the start of Season Two, after serving eighteen months in prison, he is released due to lack of evidence.

Capitani is now working as a private detective in Luxembourg City. A sex worker, Bianca Petrova (Lydia Indjova), calls him to look into the disappearance of another prostitute. Capitani quicky finds her body in a park. It turns out the sex worker hired Capitani at the request of the owner of what is called here a cabaret, but in reality it is a strip club and a brothel. That proprietor is Valentina Draga (Edita Malovcic). After the murder of another prostitute, the owner of a competing cabaret, Gibbes Koenig (André Jung), reaches out to Draga. Each of them has an ambitious son, respectively Dominik Draga (Adrien Papritz) and Arthur Koenig (Tommy Schlesser), who are seeking to expand their operations.

And business is poor. This is the first television series that I have viewed that has incorporated the COVID-19 pandemic into its plot. The lockdowns have been devastating to the cabarets and those two sons look to narcotics to make up the difference. Drugs in Luxembourg City are sold openly on the streets by Nigerian immigrants–much in the manner that I’ve witnessed on the West Side of Chicago–while under surveillance of two cops, Elsa Ley (Sophie Mousel), who was Capitani’s unofficial partner in Manscheid, and Toni Scholtes (Philippe Thelen). One of those drug dealers, Lucky Onu (Edson Anibal), is in Luxembourg not to peddle narcotics, but to find his sister, Grace (Jennifer Heylen), another sex worker.

Similar to Clint Eastwood’s character in A Fistful Of Dollars, a work that was based on the Akiro Kurosawa film Yojimbo, Capitani works both sides of the brothel competition. And he hasn’t completely broken ties with the Luxembourg Police. There’s a third angle being played, Capitani is regularly speaking with a senior police official, Pascale Cojocaru (Larisa Faber).

If you enjoy Nordic noir movies and television shows–as I do–you’ll like Capitani. There is no Netflix wokism here, the performances are captivating, and the cinematography succeeds by capturing views of beauty and squalor in Luxembourg City. And the plot keeps you guessing enough to make things interesting. Both seasons have twelve episodes, with each entry lasting around 30 minutes.

Both seasons of Capitani are currently streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for nudity, violence, drug use, obscene language, and sex. You can watch in the original Luxembourgish with subtitles, although there is much English dialogue here, or in dubbed English.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Merrick Garland is America’s worst attorney general since Harding’s Harry M. Daugherty

Posted: July 10, 2022 by John Ruberry in congress, crime, News/opinion, politics
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Official Merrick Garland portrait

By John Ruberry

America has endured some terrible attorneys general, Eric Holder, who served under Barack Obama and was held in contempt of Congress over the Fast and Furious scandal, John Mitchell, a Richard M. Nixon AG, who became the only the second US cabinet official to spend time in a federal prison, and Harry M. Daugherty, the leader of corrupt “Ohio Gang” during the administration of Warren G. Harding. 

And finally, there is Merrick Garland, once heralded as a moderate after Obama nominated him to succeed Antonin Scalia on the US Supreme Court in 2016. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t hold confirmation hearings on Garland. Donald Trump was elected president later that year, he nominated Neil Gorsuch to the SCOTUS bench, where he is now part of the conservative majority. 

Garland is the worst US attorney general since Daugherty.

Who was Daughterty? He was a minor political figure in Ohio who gained power as a behind-the-scenes kingmaker. A drinker like Harding, hey, like most Americans in the early 20th century, Daugherty got involved in the prohibition movement for political expediency. And he’s the man who worked the famous “smoke-filled room” at Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel to win Harding the Republican nomination for president in 1920. In Harding’s words about his successful election, “We drew a pair of deuces and filled.”

Although Harding’s cabinet had some magnificent choices, Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of State and Andrew Mellon as head of the Treasury Department, the Harding cabinet included Daugherty and Albert Fall, secretary of Interior. Fall accepted bribes as he sold cheap oil leases on federal land in what became known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, which led to a prison term for him, a first for a cabinet member. Daugherty, if he investigated it at all, barely looked into Teapot Dome. 

Daugherty’s assistant at Justice, and his roommate, was Jess Smith, who probably allowed alcohol owned by the federal government to be sold to bootleggers. Smith committed suicide a few months before Harding’s death in 1923.

Besides corruption, the Ohio Gang was known for its alcohol-fueled poker games at its de facto headquarters, “the Little House on K Street,” in Washington. Yes, there was a two-tiered justice system then.

And that’s been the charge against Garland’s Justice Department. No, not the poker games, but a two-tiered justice system. Don’t get me wrong, the January 6 rioters deserve punishment, even though most of them are probably guilty of nothing more than trespassing. 

Jim Banks, who Nancy Pelosi prevented from serving on the House January 6th Committee, summed up Garland’s hypocrisy perfectly. 

From the American Thinker:

Citing the Justice Department’s lenient treatment of left-wing rioters compared to the harsh treatment of Jan. 6, 2021 rioters at the Capitol, including many who “are not accused of entering the Capitol or committing violence,”

Rep. Jim Banks (R.-Ind.), in a two-page letter dated June 14, 2022, accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of leading “a two-tiered system of justice” at the Department of Justice. Congressman Banks asserted: “Violent rioters who are likely to vote Democrats [sic] are often released with a slap on the wrist, or less, while January 6th defendants are prosecuted to the harshest extent possible.”  

Asserting that “the unequal application of justice is an injustice,” Mr. Banks accused the attorney general of politicizing federal law, thereby assaulting “the basic American principle of equal justice under the law.” 

Then there is Hunter Biden, a Chicago-style influence-peddler. Garland is from the Chicago area; he surely knows a lot about mediocre people like Hunter throwing his weight around as he enriches himself and his family.

Just now on Fox Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, US Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told the host, “We have a two-tiered justice system, one that will treat with kid gloves, or cover up for, Democrats and their powerful friends, the elite–and the rest of Americans. And I think we are seeing that big time with Hunter Biden and all of his very suspicious [financial] transactions.”

Ever since the Supreme Court draft on Dobbs v. Jackson was leaked, the case that overruled Roe v. Wade, there have been protests, in violation of federal law, in front of the homes of conservative justices. So far no one has been charged, even though there is voluminous video evidence that had been aired by news outlets and on YouTube that includes clearly recognizable faces. Announcements of protests are posted on social media.

Is Garland quietly cheering on these illegal protests? Don’t forget, it was Garland’s office that asked the FBI to investigate parents protesting school boards over the teaching of Critical Race Theory, citing unnamed threats.

Last month former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro, who was 72 years old at the time, was put in leg irons by the FBI, after being indicted on contempt of Congress charges. “Who are these people? This is not America,” Navarro said during his first appearance in federal court. “I was a distinguished public servant for four years!”

Navarro, who has not faced prior legal troubles, is hardly a flight risk. 

Earlier this year, former Illinois House speaker Michael Madigan, who served in that role for four decades–and the former chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party–was indicted on a slew of corruption charges. 

Who wants to make a bet with me that Boss Madigan, also a septuagenarian, was not put in leg irons after his indictment?

Daughtery was later asked to resign as attorney general by Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge. He faced trial twice on unrelated charges. Both trials ended with hung juries. 

Garland will face tough questions next year, as congressional investigations led by Republicans will zoom in on the many debacles created by the Biden White House. Look for Garland to answer in the same fashion as Nixon’s Watergate co-conspirators did during the Watergate Senate hearings. “I don’t know” was a common response, as was “I don’t recall.”

Maybe, just maybe, Garland will answer questions about whether he plays poker at boozy parties in Washington.

John Ruberry regular blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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