Posts Tagged ‘new york’

If the White Sox move to Nashville, I might already be there to welcome them–with updates

Posted: August 27, 2023 by John Ruberry in baseball, crime, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

For the second straight post at Da Tech Guy, I’m writing about crime in Chicago.

Outside of the Oakland Athletics, who are on pace to lose over 110 games and may be headed to Las Vegas next season, no MLB team has had a worse season than the Chicago White Sox. 

Predicted to finish around the .500 mark–which is where they finished up, exactly, in 2022–the South Siders never recovered from an April 10-game losing streak. 

The Sox on are pace to lose 100 game this year, which is how many they lost in 2018. That season, the White Sox unloaded several veteran players, kicking off a rebuild project with the goal of bringing the World Series championship back to the South Side for the first time since 2005. That rebuild brought the Sox to the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, but they won only two playoff games–losing five.

Another teardown occurred this July, the White Sox are in rebuild mode again.

August has been even worse for the Sox. Longtime team owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, known to be loyal to a fault with the front office staff of the White Sox and the Chicago Bulls–Reinsdorf owns that team too–uncharacteristically fired the top two men in the White Sox front office, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams. A couple of days later, news broke that the White Sox, a charter member of the American League, might move out of its current stadium, the state-owned Guaranteed Rate Field, its home since 1991, to elsewhere in Chicago, or perhaps to the suburbs or even Nashville. The Sox have six years left on their lease at Guaranteed Rate Field. 

On Friday night, in a game where the Sox were punished 12-4 against those otherwise awful Athletics, a female fan in the left field bleachers was shot in the abdomen, another woman was grazed by a bullet. 

A move to the suburbs–perhaps joining the Chicago Bears in Arlington Heights–or to Tennessee, probably is more attractive now more than ever for Reinsdorf.

The woman who was shot Friday night is in fair condition, the fan who was grazed by the bullet declined medical care.

According to the quite reliable CWB Chicago, police officials are exploring the possibility that the bullet that wounded the woman may have been fired from a mile away. A gunshot detection system detected gunfire a mile southeast of Guaranteed Rate Field–in the Bronzeville neighborhood. The White Sox and the CPD, in several statements, have said that the shooting was not part of any altercation inside the ballpark.

If CWB Chicago is correct, the Sox and the city of Chicago still have a big problem. And there is an historic precedent that bodes poorly for professional baseball on Chicago’s South Side.

The rise in criminality since 2020 has been the dominant news story in Chicago, despite subtle attempts by the mainstream media to minimize it. Headlines routinely speak of people “injured” in shootings, rather than using the correct verb, which is “wounded.” The first Chicago Police Department statement on the Guaranteed Rate gunshots spoke of a “shooting incident,” rather than a “shooting.”

Another MLB “shooting incident,” actually a homicide, took place during batting practice before a July 4 doubleheader between the host New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds–in the Coogan’s Bluff area of upper Manhattan in 1950. The post World War II decline of New York was underway, although the city was years away from bottoming out. The way NYC’s fictional doppelganger, Gotham City, was portrayed in the Joker movie is a pretty accurate portrayal of what New York was destined to become.

A teenager, in a twisted way to celebrate the Fourth of July, fired a gun from the roof of an apartment building a half-mile away from the Polo Grounds. A fan sitting in the upper deck, Bernard “Barney” Doyle, was instantly killed by the stray bullet. A horrifying photograph of Doyle slumped over, dead of course, was on the front page of the New York Daily News the next day. That pic probably gave New Yorkers nightmares for years.

The Giants struggled at the gate in the 1950s. Despite winning the World Series in 1954, only 1.1 million fans crossed the Polo Grounds turnstiles that season. In their last two seasons at the Polo Grounds, only the pathetic Washington Senator’s had worse attendance. City Journal’s Clark Whelton, writing about the Doyle killing in 2018, claims the crime was “quickly forgotten.” I’m not so sure. But Whelton did add of the team’s owner, Horace Stoneham, that he was “said to have brooded for years about Doyle’s strange demise and the run-down buildings on Coogan’s Bluff.”

In 1958, the Giants and Dodgers abandoned New York for California. When they arrived, there were plenty of Giants and Dodgers fans who had moved out to the Golden State before them.

As our day jobs wind down, Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I are eyeing our exit from crime-ridden, crumbling, corrupt, and tax-greedy Illinois. Tennesse is at the top of our list for our next, and likely last, home. Both of us watched Joker for the first time this month. We compared Gotham City to today’s Chicago.

Why should we stay here?

Wouldn’t it be great if we, as Tennessee residents, were there to welcome the White Sox to Nashville?

UPDATE August 28, 2023, 7:15pm EDT:

Thank you to Dan Proft of WIND-AM Chicago. He, along with Amy Jacobson, co-host Chicago’s Morning Answer–a show I Iisten to, either over the air, or by way of the podcast, nearly every weekday–for mentioning this post on the air today. Look for Proft’s take around the 9 minute mark.

Also, here’s an update, and I have a strong feeling there will be more than one for this blog entry. Chicago’s interim police superintendant, Fred Waller, in a press conference this afternoon, discussed what his public affairs callously called a “a shooting incident” on Friday night. It was a shooting. “We’re dispelling a lot of things,” Waller said. As for where the bullets originated, he added that “coming from outside [Guaranteed Rate Field] is something we’ve almost completely dispelled.”

Still, fans who have bought tickets to a Sox game, or are considering doing so, probably have a lot on their minds now, to say the least.

UPDATE August 29, 2023 4:20pm EDT:

This story keeps getting stranger. There was online chatter that one of the women who was shot had sneaked the gun inside Guaranteed Rate Field beneath her belly rolls. I mean, what kind of people make up stuff like that?

Well, they may not have to do so.

Here’s what longtime Chicago sports reporter, Peggy Kusinski just tweeted:

“As I reported on @ESPN1000 just now… the shooting at Guaranteed Rate Field during a #WhiteSox game was indeed an accidental discharge by one of the women “grazed” by the bullet. She reportedly snuck the gun in past metal detectors hiding it in the folds of her belly fat.”

ESPN 1000 AM is the White Sox flagship radio station. It’s a credible source and Kusinski is a solid journalist.

If true, this news is a black mark for the White Sox fan base. What type of person brings a handgun to a baseball game? On the other hand, after the game, in a heavily hyped promotion, Vanilla Ice was to be the headliner of a “90s Night” concert. Were the women there for the Sox-Athletics game or for the postgame show? The White Sox cancelled the gig due to what they called “technical difficulties.” They lied. Shame on the White Sox. Police officers wanted to keep stadium lights on to look for evidence.

And how does a gun detection system miss a firearm hidden in belly rolls?

And what about the Chicago Police Department? Interim superintendent Waller said in a Monday press conference, “At one point in time it was requested as a precaution” to cancel the game. But the game played on. Who made that call to continue? The White Sox? The police? Mayor Brandon Johnson? The women who were shot are said to be teachers. Johnson is a product of the Chicago Teachers Union, for whom he was a longtime organizer, and Johnson is a former CPS teacher. Johnson’s political career is a creation of the CTU.

Without a doubt, I’ll have at least one more update.

Update August 29, 2023, 9:15pm EDT:

Second City Cop is hinting about the “graze wound” woman, that the injury may have been a power burn, is a Chicago Public Schools teacher.

UPDATE: A CPS teacher had the gun?

UPDATE: A CPS teacher with a suburban home address?

John Ruberry, a lifetime Chicago White Sox fan, blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Bud Light, CMT boycotts betray a New York problem

Posted: July 23, 2023 by John Ruberry in business, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Another company, this time the CMT Network, finds itself in trouble by angering its base by going woke. Now both are facing boycotts. The Bud Light one has been devastating for what until recently was America’s best-selling beer.

Last week, CMT, whose core audience comprises of country music listeners, pulled the video for Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” The song, which was released in May with no controversy, decries the pro-criminal sentiments celebrated in big cities, like New York City, where CMT is headquartered, and it shows BLM and Antifa riot news clips as Aldean croons.

That was too much for CMT. 

Country music fans lean right. I am one of them, although I favor the Americana genre over mainstream country. Country listeners are likely to be the men and women who repair your car, service your air conditioner, or build your home. They may not have Ivy League degrees like Bud Light’s vice president of marketing, the on-leave Alissa Heinerscheid, but these “deplorables” are not dopes. And they aren’t Manhattan-style know-it-alls. 

I imagine, until the Heinerschied-led marketing debacle with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, many country music fans drank Bud Light. 

As of this writing on the evening of July 23, Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is the number one song on iTunes and it has been viewed 15 million times on YouTube. 

For Friday’s CMT Music 12 Pack Countdown, Aldean’s massive hit was not among the dozens of songs nominated for the final cut. 

Clearly, CMT is as out of touch with its consumers as much as Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light are.

CMT has Nashville offices but as I mentioned earlier, it is based in New York. Anheuser-Busch has its headquarters where it was founded 171 years ago, in St. Louis, although it is now owned by Belgian firm InBev. 

But Anheueser-Busch’s marketing offices are in Manhattan, where Heinersheid lives.

Would things be different now for Anheuser-Busch if Heinerscheid and her marketing geniuses were instead based in St. Louis? And while no one is coming forward from CMT claiming credit for pushing the “kill” button on Aldean’s video, my guess is that the decision came from someone at their New York headquarters. 

The anger that brought forth the Bud Light and CMT boycotts are byproducts of elites who are isolated from the consumers they are supposed to be experts on. 

Can these brilliant minds do their jobs from places like St. Louis? Nashville? Of course, they can. As they can in Cincinnati, Billings, and Oklahoma City. You know, medium-sized cities. To be sure, they’re not Aldean-favored small towns, but these other cities are filled with less sophisticated types than the “betters” that you find in New York City.

Oh, there are telephones, computer lines in those smaller cities. And there is this thing called Zoom.

However, Bud Light did farm out the Mulvaney campaign to an advertising agency thousands of miles from Manhattan.

It was to a firm based in suburban San Francisco.

John Ruberry, who regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit, was a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He’s pictured here at Penn Station (correction Grand Central Station) in New York.

Crime pays as NYC DAs drop most post-death-of-George Floyd looting and rioting charges

Posted: June 20, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, politics
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North Michigan Avenue in Chicago last summer after rioting

By John Ruberry

A bit more than a year ago most large American cities were struck by widespread rioting and looting after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. 

Of course for the most part the rioting was termed “unrest” by the mainstream media. In case you think reporters forgot what the word “riot” means, the “R” word was front in center in January news coverage after a pro-Donald Trump mob stormed the US Capitol. 

Local television reporters across the country–who are generally more credible than their dead-tree media counterparts–brought viewers many scenes of unmasked people emptying out stores. Some of the looters even posted their crimes on social media.

Were these outrages open-and-shut case for prosecutors? Yes, but not in the way you think. 

From NBC New York:

NYPD data reviewed by the NBC New York I-Team shows 118 arrests were made in the Bronx during the worst of the looting in early June. 

Since then, the NYPD says the Bronx DA and the courts have dismissed most of those cases – 73 in all. Eighteen cases remain open and there have been 19 convictions for mostly lesser counts like trespassing, counts which carry no jail time. 

Jessica Betancourt owns an eyeglass shop that was looted and destroyed along Burnside Avenue in the Bronx last June.

Those numbers, to be honest with you, is [sic] disgusting,” Betancourt said when told of the few cases being prosecuted.

According to the NBC New York, prosecutors are claiming that there is a backlog of cases because of the COVID-19 epidemic. “If they are so overworked that they can’t handle the mission that they’re hired for, then maybe they should find another line of work,” says former NYPD Chief of Patrol Wilbur Chapman.  True, that.

There is a similar pattern of prosecutorial malpractice in Manhattan too. The DA in Manhattan is Cyrus Vance Jr, the leftist zealot who is on a Captain Ahab-like quest to charge Donald Trump with crimes.

The primary focus of any prosecutor should be to protect the public. But are prosecutors subject to the “CSI Effect” that plagues trials? That is, short of videotaped confessions of criminals, there is always room for a scintilla of doubt–because cases laid out perfectly when presented in a television drama.

Maybe. But instead I suspect there is an even worse possibility.

During the rioting last summer in Chicago I watched live coverage on WGN-TV of a couple of women calmly loading their car with what must have been looted goods. The license plate of their car was readable. Locating the criminals should have been quite easy. I wonder if Cook County’s state’s attorney, the woke Kim Foxx who of course dropped the hoax charges against Jussie Smollett–since reinstated with a special prosecutor in charge–botherered to investigate those two looters?

Yes, I had to bring up Smollett. As a black man and a gay man–that’s a two-fer–the former Empire actor is automatically a double-victim. And since many of the looters were minorities, they are victims too. Not of course the owners of stores that were looted last year even though many of those shop owners were minorities too. The criminals are the victims here, it’s not the other way around. If this quasi-reasoning makes sense to you then I recommend that you watch less CNN and MSNBC–and cancel your subscription to The Atlantic.

Some in the dead-tree media have called these riots and outbreaks of looting an uprising. Here and here, for instance. Meanwhile, the investigation of the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, which The Media Elect is calling either a riot or an insurrection–is being aggressively pursued by federal prosecutors, and the allegd perpetatrors are being charged with low-level crimes such as tresspassing. Yes, they should be prosecuted. But to call the Capitol Riot, in the words some federal prosecutors, an “existential threat” to the republic is a gross exaggeration. And some of those alleged rioters are being held in solitary confinement in Gitmo-like conditions, including the moron who put his on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and the so-called QAnon Shaman. Yeah, I get it, the feds have jurisdiction over the Capitol attack, not New York or Chicago prosecutors. But the message to the public should be clear here.

Then there is Antifa, which for weeks was violently attacking nearly every night the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon. Where is the dogged federal investigation of those riots? 

But I fear some in prosecutorial circles sympathize with Antifa, as I strongly suspect they do in regards to the George Floyd “uprising.”

It seems that prosecutors are taking sides. And that in the right circumstances crime pays well for the criminals. 

But civil society cannot survive such a mindset. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Don’t Think We Ain’t Keepin’ Score

Posted: April 11, 2020 by julietteochieng in media, News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths, war
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Prince of the Blessed Side-Eye Memory

Somebody has to

by baldilocks

This is pretty much a continuation of my last post on the fear-mongering goals of Big Media.

ABC

The Pentagon says a supposed intelligence report cited by ABC News on an emerging COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t exist.

ABC said the report was issued in November by the National Center for Medical Intelligence, an arm of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It supposedly warned of a pandemic of what would be later named COVID-19.

Relying on sources who said they saw the report, ABC News said the warning was briefed “multiple times” to the DIA, the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Trump White House. (…)

Col. R. Shane Day, a physician who heads the medical intelligence unit, issued a flat denial.

“As a matter of practice, the National Center for Medical Intelligence does not comment publicly on specific intelligence matters,” Col. Day said. “However, in the interest of transparency during this current public health crisis, we can confirm that media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November of 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists.”

CBS

CBS News said an “an editing mistake” led to the network airing footage of an Italian hospital during a segment on New York’s coronavirus crisis in a statement to the Daily Caller on Monday.

“CBS This Morning” discussed Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s allegation that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) only gave the state 400 ventilators when they needed 30,000 on March 25. The network aired footage of a crowded Italian hospital room that was reported by Sky News on March 22 during a segment on hospitals in the country.

CNN


There are dozen — hundreds — of examples which long precede the headline dominance of the Wuhan Plague. But ADD is much a more virulent virus, if not as deadly. Usually.

Many of you are still oblivious to this pattern, but now you have a lot more time to pay attention. Seize that time.

Just trying to assist you for the next Big Media “mistake.”

Happy Passover and Happy Resurrection Day!

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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