Tag: politics

Attacking Democrats on high gasoline prices is the best way to kick them in the gas this fall

Morton Grove, Illinois, February 27, 2022

By John Ruberry

By dodging a question on this weekend’s edition of Flannery Fired Up of Fox Chicago, US Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) offered up, unintentionally, perhaps the most vulnerable issue, and there are many or them, that Democrats face this fall.

That issue is soaring gasoline prices. 

After explaining to host Mike Flannery how Russia supplies a large amount of natural gas to western Europe, Quigley said, without proof, “That is going to be shut off.”

Then Flannery serves up a fastball query to Quigley. “So, if we end up with four-dollar, five-dollar or more a-gallon gasoline, that’s going to hurt Democrats this fall. What should President Biden do about that? What can he do about it? Because we have American oil producers holding back, they’re saying that your Democrats in Congress and President Biden are hostile to energy.”

“You know I don’t buy that at all,” was Quigley’s flaccid response, then the Democrat retreated to a classic fallback, the appeal to sympathy fallacy, when he discussed how he met with residents of Chicago’s Ukranian Village neighborhood, and then pivoted to another logic fallacy, appeal to ridicule, by attacking former President Trump, stating, in a great exaggeration, how Trump recently praised Vladimir Putin. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of gasoline in the Chicago area, where Quigley and I live, was $2.47-a-gallon in January 2021, the month when Trump left office and was succeeded by Joe Biden. In January this year it was $3.56-a-gallon, more than a dollar more. I live in Cook County, where gas taxes are higher, I’m seeing $3.91-a-gallon now in Morton Grove, Illinois. Amazingly, again according to the BLS, the national average was only slightly higher than Chicago area prices, probably because the figures are skewed by California’s extortion-level overtaxing of gasoline. 

Apologists for Biden and the Democrats claim a post-lockdown economic turnaround is responsible for the gas price hikes. That’s a lie, the worst of the lockdowns were over in the autumn of 2020, when Trump was still president. Among Biden’s first acts as president was cancelling the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Biden administration is halting or delaying new leases to drill on federal land. Less petroleum means less gasoline which means higher prices. 

Now, using the January 2021-2022 gas prices hike numbers, assuming you fill up your 15-gallon gas tank for your automobile once a week, you are now paying $16 -a-week additional for fuel. Spread that expense over a year and you are over $800 poorer now. And I was using the January 2002 price. And gas prices have gone up since then and they are headed higher, even Biden admits that, because of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Let’s Go Brandon!

Drill here, drill now, pay less, vote Republican!

Stop the Green New Deal!

“Fact-checkers,” the Ministry of Truth wing of the media and the Democratic Party, have produced numerous reports that such energy analyses as mine are “inconclusive” or “missing context.”  These “fact-checkers” are keyboard propagandist tricksters of the three-card Monte variety. Luckily more people are laughing at them, or worse, since leftists crave attention of all kinds, even negative, they’re now ignoring the “fact-checkers.”

So, Quigley, when he avoided Flannery’s question, admitted his party’s biggest political vulnerability, high gasoline prices. If Biden reverses his anti-energy policies, it can be a potent weapon, a non-violent one, against Vladimir Putin and Russia, by driving down petroleum and natural gas prices. Western Europe of course is a major consumer of Russian natural gas, as Quigley explained.

If Biden stays the course on failure–high energy prices will deliver an electoral wipeout for the Dems.

They’ll deserve it.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Biden and Western weakness will hand Ukraine over to Russia

Bumper sticker that reads, in Ukranian, “Putin is a d*ckhead.”

By John Ruberry

“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.” Ronald Reagan.

Contrary to the lessons that are almost certainly taught in American universities by leftist professors, large military budgets are not a precursor to war. In reality history teaches us something different.

As the Ottoman Empire declined in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Turks were faced with numerous rebellions and wars. They were on the losing side in nearly all of them, as ethnic groups and nations saw their opportunities, and for the most part, took them. One of those opportunistic states was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, itself in decline. Its annexation of Bosnia, nominally still part of the Ottoman Empire, in 1908 nearly caused a war in the Balkans. But a few years later there were two conflicts, the First Balkan War and the Second Balkan War, which, along with the assassination of the heir apparent of Austria-Hungary in Bosnia in 1914, and to be fair some other European disputes, set the table for World War I. 

The First World War brought us World War II, arguably the same conflict with a two-decade intermission, which led to the Cold War, then the collapse of communism, with eventually, former KGB agent Vladimir Putin becoming the de facto president-for-life of Russia.

Do you see where weakness leads us?

Last year, with the inauguration of Joe Biden, an emphasis on wokeness and diversity was pushed by our military leaders, instead of more important things, such as defending America and confronting enemies. Far worse for the appearance of American military strength was the rapid fall of Afghanistan. As bad as the fall of Saigon was for the image of the USA, the South Vietnamese were able to hold off the communists for two years after the departure of American combat troops. Afghanistan fell before Joe Biden’s pullout date. 

Which brings us back to Putin. 

Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. As soon as this week, Russian troops, including some in Putin’s client-state of Belarus, could invade the rest of Ukraine. While I am not an advocate of sending troops to Ukraine, now that is, if Biden had sent a tripwire contingent of American and NATO ally troops to Ukraine last summer, that very well may have been enough to scare off Putin. We have troops in South Korea that aren’t sizable enough to defeat the North Koreans, but an invasion from the north would almost certainly lead to a national outrage and call for a swift response to avenge American casualties and to protect South Korea. There are NATO troops in the Baltic States, and yes, Estonia, Lativa, and Lithuania are members of NATO, which are serving a similar role. 

For those calling for an economic boycott of Russia. Good luck with that. The best way to punish Russia in the pocketbook is to stop buying Russian oil and natural gas, the latter is a crucial energy source for western Europe. That will not happen. 

Biden projected weakness early in his presidency by waiving sanctions against the Russian company building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 originate in Vyborg, Russia. It’s important to remember that between the world wars, Vyborg was part of Finland, but the Soviet Union seized it in the Winter War of 1939-1940. 

As for fossil fuels in America, Biden is instead hitching his shaky wagon to Green New Deal follies. 

Humiliating defeats don’t necessarily lead to more debacles. The first major World War II battle between American forces and the Nazis was the Battle of Kasserine Pass in North Africa, it was a fiasco for the Allies. 

What happened next?

The American commander, General Lloyd Fredendall, was sent stateside and was replaced by General George S. Patton.

After the Afghanistan rout, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, still has his job. 

Was anyone fired after the fall of Kabul? I don’t believe so. 

Worse, Putin likely sees Biden as not only weak, but as someone suffering from cognitive decline. At the very least, Biden and his top aides, were indecisive as Afghanistan collapsed, according to recently declassified documents.

Which brings us back to that Reagan quote. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Democrats exposed as complete frauds on gerrymandering

By John Ruberry

The latest, I think, Democratic Party Chicken Little existential crisis is “voting rights.” In attacking a Georgia voting reform law, President Joe Biden called it “Jim Crow on steroids,” a hateful and thoroughly dishonest claim.

C’mon man!

The end of partisan gerrymandering was one of Biden’s selling points as he stumped for his “voting rights” bills.

“For too long, partisan gerrymandering has allowed politicians to rig the political process and draw districts in their favor.” Biden said on Twitter two days ago,” voters should choose their representatives — not the other way around.” The was president celebrating a court victory for Democrats challenging a Republican-drawn state legislative map in North Carolina.

Biden and other prominent Democrats are silent on egregious gerrymandering by their party. For instance, New York currently has 27 congressional seats, slow population growth brings that number down by one for the next Congress. The current New York congressional delegation has nineteen Democrats and eight Republicans, but the new map, passed by the state Assembly, could bring a new tally, 22 Democrats and just four GOPers. 

The Dems are also quiet on Democratic gerrymandering in Maryland. That state’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, last year called on Biden to ask attorney general Merrick Garland to sue Maryland over partsian gerrymandering. Garland is probably too focused on using his FBI to harass parents who protest school boards.

Illinois, under the iron-fist rule of Boss Michael Madigan, the longtime state House speaker and Democratic party chairman, perfected Dem gerrymandering with his 2000 and 2010 remaps. Madigan was finally ousted as speaker last year and he quickly resigned his party office, but the chicanery continues.

With the departure of Madigan, Illinois’ governor, J.B. Pritzker, is finally the most powerful Democrat in the Prairie State. In 2018 he repeatedly promised to veto gerrymandered remaps. The grandiloquent rhetoric continued after his election. “As I’ve said since I was a candidate, I will veto any map that is unfair,” Pritzker said in 2019. “It’s the right thing to do. We’re going to have to make sure that here in Illinois we’re not gerrymandering, that we’re drawing maps that are fair and competitive. That’s what’s best for the voters of the state, that they have choices when they go to the ballot.” 

Last year Pritzker signed the gerrymandered legislative and congressional remaps into law.  

Leftists who read this blog post will howl out, “What the gerrymandering in Texas, Tennessee, and Florida?”

Well, what about it?

Okay, yes, that’s wrong too. But the GOP is not cloaking themselves, as Biden and the Democrats are, in the memory of Martin Luther King and John Lewis. The Democrats are the bigger hypocrites here. 

Barack Obama and his first attorney general, Eric Holder, have been frequent critics of Republican gerrymandering, however, and you shouldn’t be surprised by now, they are mum on gerrymandering that favors the Democrats. 

On Twitter last week, Holder also praised the court ruling against the North Carolina state legislature remap.

Holder is the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which, because of its selective silence, can rightly be called a front group for supporters of Democratic partisan gerrymandering.

Don’t look for the hack mainstream media to blow the whistle on this blatant hypocrisy by the Democrats.

A responsible parent knows how to counter the “but-everyone-else-does-it” defense from a naughty child.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from gerrymandered Illinois at Marathon Pundit.

Review: Ozark, Season 4 Part 1

By John Ruberry

After a nearly two-year gap, the Netflix series Ozark is back with Season Four. Actually, this is Part One of Season Four, which consists of seven episodes. Part Two of this season, also consisting of seven episodes, will be released later this year and then Ozark will conclude.

The series, if you haven’t heard of it, is centered on the Byrde family from the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) is a financial planner whose firm launders money for a Mexican drug cartel. As I mentioned in my first Ozark review, this is not a wise idea. As he is about to be murdered after the cartel discovers money is being skimmed, Bryde convinces his assassins that the Lake of the Ozarks area of Missouri is an ideal place to launder even more money for the drug fiends. Byrde quickly departs for the Ozarks with his family, which is comprised of his wife Wendy (Laura Linney), their teen daughter Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz), and their younger son Jonah (Skylar Gaertner). 

The Lake of the Ozarks area is hardly crime free paradise, and they quickly encounter two other criminal families, the Snells and the trailer dwelling Langmores. 

Skipping way ahead to season four, the interactions, alliances, and betrayals among these three families continues. The FBI, here shown as an underhanded and conflicted agency, you know, kind of like the real FBI of the 21st century, is trying to break the cartel–through the Byrdes. Oh, the Kansas City mob has a presence here too. As does a big pharmaceutical firm.

By the time viewers reach the current season, the plots and subplots of Ozark are quite complicated. So if you want to enjoy Ozark–and I believe you will–you must start with the first season. However, Ozark hasn’t had a new episode in two years and memories, mine for sure, tend to fade. So I found myself, while watching the new episodes, having thoughts like this one: “Hey, whatever happened to that guy, wasn’t he murdered a couple of seasons ago? Who killed him again? And why?” Clearly, Ozark now needs Game of Thrones style recaps.

Bateman, Linney, Hublitz, and Gaertner all deliver captivating performances. However, topping them all is Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore. She’s already received two Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Emmys and I cannot imagine her not getting another nomination at the very least. Also quite good is Lisa Emery as Darlene Snell. Her character is involved in a complex relationship with Ruth’s cousin, Wyatt Langmore (Charlie Tahan). 

There’s even a rift in the drug cartel between its head, Omar Navarro (Felix Solis), and his nephew, Javier “Javi” Elzondro (Alfonso Herrera).

While it is set in the Ozarks, most of Ozark is filmed in Georgia. In the latest batch of episodes unlike Season One, the Chicago scenes were filmed in Atlanta. So I found it amusing to see a streetcar in what is supposed to Chicago’s Loop. Chicago hasn’t had streetcar service in decades. A new character, a street-smart Chicago private detective, Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg) travels to the Ozarks to investigate a disappearance. He also has a New York accent, not a Chicago one. I mean, hey, if Heath Ledger, an Australian, can do a Chi-CAW-go AXE-cent as the Joker—the Dark Knight was filmed in Chicago–so can others. Here’s a tip: talk through your nose. In an unintentional bit of humor, while discussing a potential move back to Chicago, Marty tells Charlotte that Chicago will be “safe.” Clearly, they haven’t been following the dramatic rise in crime in the city since their move to Missouri, including in Lincoln Park, a neighborhood they are considering. 

Wendy was a Democratic Party operative in Illinois. She’s conspiring, as she did in season three, with Republicans to buy respectability for the Byrdes. During that alliance-building the Republicans look really bad. But I have to point out Illinois, which is essentially a one-party state, a Democrat one, is one of the most corrupt states in the country. And let’s not forget Wendy is the matriarch of a money-laundering family. But the Republicans are the villains here. In Season Four, “Republican” is used in the dialogue twice. “Democrat” not once. 

Coincidence?

All four seasons of Ozark are streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for graphic violence, drug use, obscene language, and nudity.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

2020 election was “the most secure in American history” according to Democrats, but now Biden is already questioning 2022 midterms

By John Ruberry

Shortly after Joe Biden declared victory in the 2020 presidential election–one that Donald J. Trump said repeatedly was “rigged,” staff from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency declared that election “the most secure in American history.” 

Left-wingers, particularly those in media, viewed that statement as sacrosanct, a papal bull for liberals. But a radio host, I believe it was Mike Gallagher, issued a sagacious response to that sentiment, which went something like this, “If 2020 was the most secure election in American history, which one was the second-most secure?”

Silence.

In short, that statement on the “secure” 2020 presidential elections was a hollow as the one from 60 former national security officials about the Hunter Biden laptop, where they made the since-debunked claim that emails from Hunter’s laptop showed signs of being part of a Russian disinformation campaign. 

So if the 2020 presidential election, in the mind of leftists, was really “the most secure in American history,” how did we go from that to Biden, in last week’s rambling press conference, questioning the results of elections where the ballots haven’t even been printed yet, the 2020 midterms.

“Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election,” when asked by a reporter about whether those races would be “fairly conducted” and “legitimate.”

Wow. The Democrats and their media allies continue to pillorize Donald Trump for casting doubt on the results of the ’20 election, but here is Biden calling into question the upcoming midterms. 

It’s difficult to say if Biden was having one of his great-grandpa moments or was succumbing to the Democrats’ wont to cast every political issue as an existential crisis. Perhaps both. Jen Psaki once again had to conduct a clean-up in the supermarket aisle as Star Trek’s John Gill created another mess. 

The Democrats have been in a hyper-tizzy for almost a year because of the recently-enacted Georgia voting law, which expands early voting but also establishes controls to minimize vote fraud. Biden called it “Jim Crow on steroids,” a hateful insult, because until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black voters were disenfranchised in most of the southern states, including Georgia.

The 2021 Georgia reforms are in fact about election integrity.

Despite multiple calls from conservative pundits, Democrats haven’t come up with a single person who was unlawfully denied the right to vote in 2020.

Adding oxygen to the Dems fire, earlier this month Biden likened opponents to what he calls “voting rights” to notorious racists Bull Connor, George Wallace, and Jefferson Davis. All three were Democrats, by the way. Here is some more history for you. Nineteen senators voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act, seventeen of them were Democrats. Some of those Dems were still members of the Senate when Biden was elected to that body in 1972.

While of course it is many within the Republican Party, led by Donald J. Trump, who question the result of the 2020 presidential election, it was the Democrats, of course without scolding from their media allies, who did the same after Trump’s victory in 2016 and George W. Bush’s narrow win in 2000. Just two weeks ago it was revealed that Vice President Kamala Harris’ new communications director, Jamal Simmons, repeatedly questioned Bush’s 2000 victory.

At the very least, the overuse of ballot drop boxes in states that Biden narrowly won, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia, just might have nudged Biden over Trump in those states. The drop boxes were brought into the voting process because of COVID-19.

Who filled out those drop box ballots? Who deposited them into those boxes?

But don’t worry. The experts said it. The 2020 presidential election was “the most secure in American history.”

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

A dystopian and real 48 hours to commit crimes in Chicago

By John Ruberry

“You got him for 48 hours,” a prison official says to Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) in the movie 48 Hours.

And “him” was Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy), a prison inmate who is given an unauthorized furlough to assist Cates in solving some murders. 

In Chicago and suburban Cook County we have a different kind of 48 Hours. 

“When someone goes missing with home-monitoring–when they leave the house unauthorized,” state Sen. John Curran (R-Downers Grove) said on this weekend’s Flannery Fired Up on Fox Chicago, “they have to be gone for 48 hours before they can be charged now.”

“We’ve had stories, several stories,” Curran told the host Mike Flannery, “about people on home-monitoring committing additional acts of violent crime when they go missing.”

“And any violation [of electronic-monitoring] should bring an immediate charge–not a 48-hour window,” Curran added.

What type of people are on home-monitoring in Cook County? 

“Seventy-five to 80 percent of my people on home monitoring are charged with a violent offense,” Cook County sheriff Tom Dart revealed in an online discussion last week. “I have about 100 people on home-monitoring who are charged with murder.”

The essential CWB Chicago site earlier this month reported on a Halloween carjacking where the accused was on electronic-monitoring for two armed robberies and a gun charge couldn’t be charged for violating his home confinement because he didn’t break the 48-hour threshold. 

Last week some of Dart’s officers shot a Chicago man who fired at them first. The suspect is accused of a slew of sexual assault charges after he violated that 48-hour electronic-monitoring window. 

There have been many other crimes committed by accused criminals under electronic-monitoring that don’t involve that two-day threshold. Some of them just simply remove the EM ankle bracelet.

Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, claims that 15 people were accused of murder while on Cook County home-monitoring in 2021. While the real number may be around 10, even that is a frightening number. Lightfoot is calling for changes in Cook County’s EM system, but her political position is weak because of her unpopularity; she is not politically close to Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County who is one of those woke George Soros-funded prosecutors who apparently sees law enforcement as some elaborate psychological experiment rigged to enable criminals to be undercharged or to walk free. Equally culpable for this parlor-game-from-hell insanity is Cook County’s chief judge, Timothy C. Evans. 

Chicago endured over 800 murders in 2021, the highest total since the crack epidemic gang wars of the mid-1990s. There were over 1,800 carjackings in Chicago last year, three times the total of 2019. And lately the Chicago area has been plagued by flash mobs of shoplifters. 

Leftist apologists of course will blame the COVID-19 pandemic for the crime epidemic. Puh-leaze. While there are still mask mandates in the Chicago area, the lockdowns have been over for more than a year. 

And a 48 hours free-pass in-all-but-name is only a tip of the crime iceberg in Chicago and is suburbs. As is overuse of electronic-monitoring.

And in Illinois, which saw over 100,000 people leave in 2021, there are always darker days on the horizon. Next year the state’s no-cash bail law goes into effect.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from suburban Cook County at Marathon Pundit.

People Joe Biden needs to fire in 2022

By John Ruberry

Joe Biden endured the worst year of any president since Jimmy Carter in 1980. Stagflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, and his well-deserved thumping at the hands of Ronald Reagan made it an annus horribilis for Jimmah–and America. 

Sadly, we are facing three more years of Biden. But in case I missed it, I don’t believe Biden fired a single person in 2021, despite a series of debacles. His predecessor, Donald Trump, wasn’t afraid to hand out pink slips.

Here’s a list of people that Biden needs to fire. 

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The goal of the CDC is, well, you know. And despite Biden’s campaign promise to “shut down the virus.” He hasn’t and nor has Walensky. Despite vaccines, more people have died of COVID-19 in 2021 than 2020. And last year the Delta and Omicron variants emerged. 

Walesnky is a dope–or perhaps a budding tyrant. In November she praised China’s “really strict lockdown” that allegedly resulted in a low death rate. What rational person can trust the ChiComms on COVID? 

Last month the CDC admitted that it greatly overestimated the number of Omicron cases in the United States.

Merrick Garland, Attorney General. Political junkies remember Garland being touted as a moderate, not a hard liberal, when Barack Obama nominated for the US Supreme Court seat that became vacant after the death of conservative jurist Antonin Scalia. But “Moderate Merrick” is a real as Bigfoot. In October Garland directed the FBI to target Americans who protest the school boards and administrators that allow bigoted critical race theory to be taught in schools. This move is an intimidation tactic against protesters and besides, any such threats, if there are any, should fall under the purview of local law enforcement. 

Garland would better serve America if he concentrated on real threats to public safety such as Antifa.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A proponent of a woke military, Milley, a Trump-appointee, presided over America’s humiliating defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan. An honorable person would have resigned after the Afghanistan catastrophe. 

Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense. See above. 

Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State. There are still hundreds of Americans trapped in Afghanistan. 

Ron Klain, White House chief of staff. Many believe, including longtime political reporter Brit Hume, that Biden is senile–including me–and a figurehead. Then who is really president? Some say it’s Klain. If so, then he’s responsible for Biden’s turn to the hard-left. Yes, Biden is another phony moderate. Anyway, it’s not working.

The White House anti-fossil fuel policy has driven up the price of gasoline and the pumping of cash has given America its worst inflation in nearly four decades. 

Susan Rice, director of the United States Domestic Policy Council. Ric Grenell, former acting head of National Intelligence under Trump, says Rice is really president. Perhaps she is co-president with Klain? Biden needs to fire both of them and replace them with real moderates. America is still a center-right country.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Trump should have fired Fauci in 2020. St. Tony of Wuhan is an embodiment of the DC Swamp, he’s been in office for nearly four decades. His greatest talent is keeping his job and getting himself on television.

Over 800,000 Americans have died of COVID. Fauci has given conflicting advice on things such as wearing masks to prevent COVID–not needed, then needed, and still needed, for starters. And Fauci lied when he said that National Institute of Health didn’t fund gain-of-function research on bats and coronavirus at Wuhan. Such research may be responsible for the COVID outbreak. 

Yes, I will almost certainly vote for a Republican for president in 2024. But I love this country too much so see America fail badly for three more years.

And in regard to the headline, when I say, “People Joe Biden needs to fire in 2022,” I mean sooner as opposed to later.

How ’bout the first working day of the new year?

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

America’s worst year since 1864

Blogger this year at the Chickamauga battlefield

By John Ruberry

With Christmas past us it’s time to look back at the current year, 2021. And with a less than a week left we can say that 2021 was America’s worst year since 1864.

Why was 1864 so bad? While there were significant military successes for the Northern armies fighting to keep the United States together–Atlanta and Savannah were captured and General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was locked into siege warfare in Virginia–and a potential political victory of the Confederacy was averted by Abraham Lincoln’s reelection, Americans were still killing each other by the thousands. The following year was an improvement, despite Lincoln’s assassination. The Civil War ended in the spring of 1865 and the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified. 

As for 2021, it got off to a wretched start when hostiles, American ones, stormed the US Capitol in a riot. We have to go back to another horrible year for America, 1814, when the British Army seized the Capitol, for the only other time that happened. The hooligans who entered the Senate and House chambers on January 6 were not participating in an insurrection, despite claims made to this day by CNN and MSNBC. Sure, the rioters wanted to keep Donald J. Trump in power, but they had no plans for a coup, such as imprisoning Joe Biden, taking control of the military, and dissolving Congress.

Bad people? Yes. Nutty? That too. And sorry leftists, President Trump did not call for an insurrection.

And what about the people who were supposed to protect the Capitol, such as the Capitol Hill Police and the who they report to? You know, Congress, which is run by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They failed America.

In the fraught election of 2020, a feeble old man, Joe Biden, was elected president. “Lunch Bucket Joe from Scranton” was chosen as the Democratic nominee because he was viewed by many as the “safe” alternative to Trump, and not a radical like Bernie Sanders. Biden’s “good years,” assuming he ever had them, are well in the past. Biden, and the people who control him, such as Ron Klain or Susan Rice, went full-blown leftist on Inauguration Day. Economically, the result is the highest level of inflation in decades. These price increases, once dismissed by the Biden White House as “transitory,” will likely continue indefinitely, serving as a hidden tax for all Americans.

While not quite energy independent as Trump claimed, our nation was headed into that direction under his leadership. Shortly after his inauguration Biden suspended new drilling and fracking on federal lands. It has since been reversed in court, but the White House maintains a malevolent attitude towards the world’s most reliable form of energy, fossil fuels. Gasoline costs over $1 more per gallon since Biden became president. Biden also cancelled the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, essentially firing thousands of union workers.

An effective commander-in-chief, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, does his job so well it appears that he is doing nothing at all. While Trump certainly doesn’t have Ike’s soft touch, I’m of the belief that Trump would have seen the possibility of a supply chain crisis coming and would have taken steps to ensure we would not have seen the bottleneck of cargo ships outside America’s largest harbors. 

Meanwhile in the Biden administration the cabinet officer in charge of our supply chain, Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, went on an unannounced two-month paternity leave just as the shipping crisis began. Rather than resigning for failure or dereliction of duty, Buttigieg’s is being hawked by some Democrats as a possible 2024 Democratic presidential candidate should Biden choose not to run for reelection. While family is of course important, liberals often claim that public service is the highest calling. Buttigieg could have simply quit as Transporation secretary. Or not taken the job at all.

While not something that the federal government is directly in charge of, violent crime plagued America’s largest cities this year–and all of those cities are run by Democrats. A dozen cities endured record murder totals. Some jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles County, Milwaukee County, and Cook County (Chicago), are burdened with woke prosecutors engaging in catch-and-release policies regarding criminals.

Biden was elected last November because more voters saw him as more capable to fight the COVID-19 epidemic than Trump. But wait, what’s this? There were more COVID deaths in the United States in 2021 than in 2020, despite the availability of vaccines. And lockdown and mask mandates are ramping up again with the new omicron variant, which so far has killed one American. That number will surely climb but I have a strong suspicion that omicron will not be killing 15,000 Americans a week as soon as next month, which is what the politicized CDC is predicting. 

In order to prove Trump wrong, Biden has proved him right in regard to enforcing the law at our southern border. In late October the Washington Post reported that a record 1.7 million people arrested while trying to cross that border. In addition to illegal aliens, it’s believed that large amounts of fentanyl have been smuggled across the border in 2021.

As Biden as Biden is, his vice president is even worse, the inept cackler, Kamala Harris.

I’ve saved the worst for last. America suffered a humiliating military defeat in Afghanistan. Biden vowed that our departure from Afghanistan would look nothing like our bugging-out from South Vietnam in 1975. He was right, it was worse. As with the border crisis, the Biden White House blamed Trump for the debacle. While Trump did enter an agreement to pull our troops out of Afghanistan this year, it was not a treaty. We could have back out. Trump says, and I believe him, that he never would have made our country look so feeble, yes, feeble like Biden physically and mentally is, if we had departed Afghanistan under his watch.

When the next international crisis comes, our allies will have understandable doubts about American resolve. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Lightfoot’s blame-the-victim response about flash mob thieves reminiscent of pre-woke SNL sketch

By John Ruberry

If you give a press conference and the result looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch, a pre-woke version of the show that is, then you have a big problem.

So it was last week with Chicago’s inept leftist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, when she blamed retail crime victims for the rise of flash mob thieves plaguing Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping area.

“We still have retailers that won’t institute plans like having security officers in their stores, making sure that they’ve got cameras that are actually operational, locking up their merchandise at night, chaining high-end bags,” the first-term Democrat said. “These purses can be something that is attracting a lot of organized retail theft units.”

So it’s the victims’ fault.

Just like it was in this SNL skit from 1991, featuring Chicago native Joe Mantegna, where he blames New York City crime victims for their problems.

“Yeah, I was flying to Florida, and we had a stopover in New York,” a caller to a talk radio show told Mantegna. “Well, while we were sitting on the ground a group of ‘wilding’ teenagers boarded the plane and beat with me on the head with a pipe.”

“And which airport was this,” Mantegna asked,

“LaGuardia,” was the reply.

“Well, there you go,” Mantegna scolded the caller.

Chicago Police brass were said to have a plan in place to combat smash-and-grab thieves and avoid scenes such as what happened when a Burberry’s on North Michigan Avenue was emptied of purses–each handbag was worth more than a thousand dollars. 

If there was a plan by the CPD, then it clearly didn’t work. Since Lightfoot’s delusional presser a North Face store on the Mag Mile was struck twice. But proving that the Burberry’s looting was just a tame opening act, yesterday a luxury car dealer just off of the Magnificent Mile was robbed of an estimated $2 million worth of high-end watches–which, are you paying attention Mayor Lightfoot?– were locked up inside a locked glass display case. Yep, $2 million.

The dealership is now seeing customers on an appointment basis only–its doors are locked during store hours. Welcome to the new Chicago.

On Friday night’s Flannery Fired Up show on Fox 32 Chicago, host Mike Flannery estimated that 20 percent of the storefronts on North Michigan Avenue are empty. Regular readers of my posts know that the Mag Mile was devastated by two rounds of looting–oops, I mean “mostly peaceful protests”–in 2020. 

The luxury dealership, which sells Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis, is owned by Joe Perillo, who is rethinking operating in Chicago.

“It is wrong for someone to break into a place – if they get caught, they get let out!” Perillo explained to ABC 7. “If they get arrested, they get let go. So, how do you intend to ever solve that problem?” He added, “If they don’t do anything about this, they’re going to lose a lot of businesses. They lost Macy’s. They’re losing Neiman Marcus. They may lose this store.”

While Neiman Marcus still has a store on the North Michigan Avenue, the Gap and Disney have also left in the last year. And remember what Flannery said about Mag Mile vacancies. 

It’s not just Lightfoot’s fault.

Kim Foxx is one of those woke so-called prosecutors whose campaign was funded by radical leftist George Soros. She’s received plenty of well-deserved scorn for her mishandling of the Jussie Smollett case. But the greater sin of the Cook County state’s attorney is her catch-and-release policy involving criminals accused of serious offenses. Even some alleged murderers are out of jail on electronic surveillance.

How ’bout if a non-woke SNL updated that skit with a Chicago twist?

“Hello, my store was emptied of merchandise by flash mob looters,” a caller to that SNL-radio show might say.

“What do you sell,” Lori Lightfoot would reply.

“Purses worth more than $1,000.”

Lightfoot’s retort would be, “Well, there you go.”

Retail groups have been complaining that shoppers are now afraid to visit North Michigan Avenue. Who can blame them?

Chicago is dying. The cause of death? Woke politicians.

Well, there you go.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Illinoisans need to organize and fight back against impending no-cash bail law

By John Ruberry

There have been over 1,000 murders this year in Cook County, Illinois–where I live–and the county where Chicago dominates hasn’t seen that many killings since 1994. As for Chicago it has, as of three days ago, endured 777 murders in 2021. 

Liberals like to talk about root causes of crime. Indeed, the current situation is horrible. Apologists for the dramatic increase in crime over the last two years like to blame the COVID-19 outbreak. But the worst outbreaks are concentrated in deep-blue metropolitan areas with so-called prosecutors, many of whom that accepted campaign contributions from funds tied to radical leftist George Soros. 

People like Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County. 

Here is one of those roots from one of Foxx’s poison seeds. Before the COVID outbreak Foxx, shortly after her first election in 2016, announced that her office would not pursue felony charges against accused shoplifters unless the value of the goods stolen exceeded $1,000. State law puts that threshold at $300.

And what happened? Retail threats soared. Here’s a story about that from 2019.

Five years later criminals, many of them wearing face masks, are emboldened. They don’t fear getting caught and if they are, because of the low-bail or no-bail policies of Foxx and Cook County judges–they are elected too–they are out on the street almost immediately.  Chicago and its suburbs are being plagued by gangs of flash mob thieves.

Crime will get worse in thirteen months–and the problem will be statewide as a no-cash bail law that Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, goes into effect. 

Small time criminals move on bigger crimes. Rudy Giuliani’s broken-windows theory of policing should be known as broken-windows fact.

And Chicago, with about 100,000 street gang members, has plenty of big-time crooks. 

Carjackings are out of control in Chicago and its suburbs. In the city there have been 1,444 carjackings so far this year–nearly double the annual total of just two years ago. Last month Chicago police arrested an 11-year-old “prolific carjacker.”

 As I mentioned last week John Kass, a columnist formerly with the Chicago Tribune, was demoted after back-stabbing liberal co-workers at the Trib complained that his column on Soros and the leftist “prosecutors” he funds was anti-Semitic. They lied and they know it.

Kass’ new columns and his podcasts can be found at JohnKassNews.com.

In his latest podcast Kass interviewed former local and federal prosecutor Robert Milan. It was a wide-ranging conversation, but I want to focus on his comments on the no-cash bail law, which is absurdly known as the SAFE-T Act.

“The new bill is going to make it easier to get out [of jail], Milan said, “in 2023 this already dire situation is going to get worse.”

He continued, “People have to organize victims of crimes and stand up and say, ‘This isn’t going to happen.”

Milan added, “Dangerous people should not be on the streets, period.”

So far in 2021, again as I mentioned last week, 56 people, as reported by CWB Chicago, have been accused of “killing, trying to kill, or shooting someone in Chicago this year while awaiting trial for a felony.”

A knee-jerk response of course is to vote-the-bums-out. That’s not so easy in Illinois, which, after a third-straight decennial redistricting, is burdened by gerrymandered districts designed to benefit the Democrats. Still, now is the time for Illinois’ feckless Republican Party to find an issue to rally on–and present itself as the party of personal safety. 

I believe the fight against no-cash bail will be up to rank-and-file Illinoisans, especially crime victims. The no-cash bail law, which fortunately still allows the most-heinous accused criminals to be locked up without bail, was largely a project of African-American legislators. But it is minorities, particularly blacks, who are usually the victims of violent crimes, particularly murder. 

Let’s get going, Illinois. Let’s get organized. Let’s make it not happen.

We’ve tried fighting crime the leftist way. It doesn’t work.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.