July 9, 2025
NO ARTICLE THIS WEEK
July 2, 2025
NEW YORK CITY SOCIALIST MAMDANI IS NOT SURE BET TO BE ELECTED MAYOR
An old adage states that if you are young and not a liberal then you have no heart, and if you are old and still a liberal then you have no brain. As demonstrated in New York City in the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary, if you are young and socialist and voted for Zohran Mamdani then you think you have a brain and if you are older/old and wealthy and voted for Mamdani then you have no brain. Mamdani, a 33-year old Socialist whose critics have said is an anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas supporter of a global Intifada, which calls for people from around the globe to participate in rising up against Israel, won the primary (see CHART) 432,305-361,840 over ex-governor Andrew Cuomo getting 43.5 percent. He won by promising a whole lot of free stuff to everybody who doesn’t have stuff to be paid for by everybody who has already earned some wealth to accumulate a lot of stuff. That is the very essence of Socialism/Marxism/Communism. Mamdani, who has no executive experience, promises (1) rent control, (2) defunding the police and replacing NYPD street officers with social workers, (3) no cash bail (already a state law) and emptying prisons, (4) fighting private healthcare insurance, (5) maintaining NYC as a Sanctuary City, which costs $5 billion annually and also no co-operation with ICE and Trump, (6) free daycare, (7) free needles and injection sites for drug addicts, (8) expanding gender-affirming care, (9) free abortion and contraceptives, (10) grocery stores run by the city with price controls, (11) a $30-an hour minimum wage and (13) free public transit. I think he forgot about a guaranteed minimum income, maybe 5K a month for every New Yorker? Imagine the cost. That’s next. HURRY UP AND WAIT: Now that governor JB Pritzker (D), has deigned to bless us with the privilege of having him as our governor until 2031, it’s shelter-in-place for every other statewide Democratic officeholder – Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Treasurer Mike Frerichs and Comptroller Susana Mendoza. In other words either run for re-election in 2026 and wait to run for governor in 2030. Or run for Chicago mayor in 2027. And that is exactly what Mendoza, who lives in Portage Park, is likely pondering – which is running against Johnson. Cook County Democratic slatemakers meet July 17-18 to endorse a county and state ticket and Mendoza has promised that if she seeks re-election she will NOT run for mayor. That’s both commendable and astute. Two Democrats are already lusting for her job; Margaret Croke, a former top aide to Pritzker and now a state rep from the Lincoln Park area, and Marcus Evans, a state rep from the South Shore. Attached is a CHART of recent NYC mayor results.Full Article...
June 25, 2025
THE LIFE AND IMMINENT DEATH OF NEWSPAPERING -- 1919 TO PRESENT
“It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” baseball sage Yogi Berra opined. For Mike Kaage, owner/operator of the Edison Park Kaage newsstand, it will be over on June 29. That’s the day he shutters the newspaper stand at Northwest Highway/Oliphant after 82 years. He’s not selling it because nobody wants to buy a business that sells what nobody buys anymore – like newspapers. In the post-WWII days and through the 1950s and 1960s newspapers were the fount of news. There were four dailies, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times published in the morning with yesterday’s news and the Chicago Daily News and Chicago American (later renamed Chicago Today in the 1970s) published in the afternoon with overnight and AM news and a rehash of yesterday’s news. Kaage’s newsstand was once open until 9 p.m., sold well more than a thousand copies a day (plus magazines) and was a very profitable enterprise. Television was very much in its infancy. None of that 24/7 cable news. The major networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) had their daily national/world news at 5:30 p.m. and the local channels (9, 7, 5, 2) had their news at 10 p.m. I’m dating myself here obviously, but people primarily got their news by reading it on a piece of paper. THIS COLUMN: There are a whole lot of readers of this column who fervently wish I would just croak, retire or get devoured by some predator in my backyard. I intend to be around for at least another year, and this month marks the commencement of my 53rd year of writing this stuff. I should quit, but why quit now, when the Left and the Right top themselves daily in terms of ridiculousness. Full Article...
June 18, 2025
DEMOCRATS, LEFT NEWS MEDIA NEED TO JUST SHUT UP ABOUT TRUMP
Any person who has gone through the dating scene, as I did long ago, understands the timeless adage that what you don’t say you don’t have to explain later. And believe me, girlfriends (and spouses) remember EVERYTHING you say. That’s why silence is golden. But I better shut up now. And so should the Democrats and the anti-Trump news media. The 2028 election is 40 months away and Trump will not be running. Trump will be president for another 43 months, and that’s about 1,300 more days of absolute apocalyptic catastrophe in the eyes of the Left. And normal voters have just tuned out. Mark Twain once opined that there are “Lies. Damn lies. And statistics.” Some statistics don’t lie. I spent considerable time researching the facts on the CHART attached to this article and I was stunned at some of the numbers. Here are my takeaways. A humongous $2.5 billion was spent in the 2024, $1.5 by the Harris-Walz Democrats to villanize Trump, and yet the Democratic base vote declined by 6 MILLION over 2020. And turnout in 2024 over 2020 actually DECLINED by 3.2 million. How can that be? The simplistic answer is two words: Harris-Walz. But this column will be more sophisticated and look at the 21 presidential elections over the 80 years since 1944. There is a distinct ebb and flow, a granular turnout increase almost every cycle, and a hardened party (R and D) base which never fluctuates and remains about 45-47 percent each. Attached is an election CHART which chronicles results and turnout in the 21 presidential races from 1944 to 2024. Full Article...
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