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Government Corruption

Watchdog: Nearly 800,000 inactive registrants in Illinois voter rolls

2023-07-23

[JustTheNews] Judicial Watch announced Friday a federal judge ordered the Illinois State Board of Elections to turn over voter roll data.

Forthcoming research from nonprofit conservative watchdog Judicial Watch indicates Illinois has close to 800,000 inactive registered voters.

Judicial Watch announced Friday a federal judge ordered the Illinois State Board of Elections to turn over voter roll data to the Illinois Conservative Union and three registered voters. The state had allowed review in person in Springfield during limited hours, but that was 200 miles from where the plaintiffs live.

Friday’s ruling means plaintiffs will get access to digital copies of voter rolls for the past 15 elections to include “registrant’s full name … residential street address … email address … telephone number, county and state voter identification number, age of the registrant, and the registrant’s status (active or inactive) and the most recent date the entry was changed.”

“Clean voter rolls mean cleaner elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “This is a victory for all legal voters in Illinois. Voters will now have the transparency that federal law requires in order to ensure elections in Illinois are more honest and cleaner.”

Judicial Watch also announced forthcoming research it plans to release based on recent census data and information Illinois reported to the federal Election Assistance Commission that shows 14% of Illinois’ counties have more registered voters than citizens over 18, indicating the state has close to 800,000 inactive registrants.

“Those are staggering numbers and the very reason why we need the openness and transparency in an effort to clean up these voter rolls, again, just another step to try and restore faith in the system, in the election system, for the voters of Illinois,” state Rep. Brad Halbrook told The Center Square.

As a member of the Illinois House Ethics and Elections Committee, Halbrook argued for changes.

“These 40 day, prior to election day, vote by mail, early voting, ballots can be counted up to 14 days, the potential with rank-choice voting on the horizon, all of this stuff is not good for clean and fair elections and has to be reformed,” Halbrook said.

Judicial Watch has a pending lawsuit challenging Illinois’ weeks-long election process, arguing federal elections should be decided on election day, not weeks after.

Link

Home Front: Politix

'60s Denialism: Affirmative Action's Last Ditch Defense

2023-07-12

[American Thinker] As with many semantic corruptions, the left started it. They trivialized the term "denialism" by applying it not to the denial of a real tragedy, but to skepticism about an imagined climate doomsday. I would like to rehabilitate the phrase a little bit, if I could, by applying it to the denial of an historic phenomenon as real as the Holocaust and potentially as tragic.

I refer here to the havoc wrought by the 1960s. Havoc came in many forms: the zeitgeist shift that undermined personal responsibility, the programs that undermined the family, and the social upheaval that glorified casual sex and single parenthood.

Only by denying the fallout from the 1960s did Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson make even the illusion of sense in their recent dissents on the affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court. After a year of research for my new book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities, I know all too well the audacity of that denial.

To be fair to the '60s, the effects of this progressive mind virus had begun to surface in the previous decade. As early as 1957, for instance, Stephen Sondheim was satirizing it in his lyrics to West Side Story's "Gee, Officer Krupke." The psychiatrists, social workers, and judges who believe that "society" has played the young gang-bangers "a terrible trick" all come in for a deserved ribbing.

But there was nothing funny about what was to come. Almost unnoticed, a labyrinth of soul-crushing social programs was taking root and would soon be institutionalized by the Lyndon Johnson administration under the rubric of "The Great Society."

At the time, the only person brave enough — or crazy enough — to call attention to the damage done by these programs was Johnson's undersecretary of labor (and later U.S. senator), Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In his remarkably prescient report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action," Moynihan sounded the alarm in 1965, the same year the Great Society was launched.

"The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling," Moynihan warned. Causing the dissolution were the sundry social programs that promised women financial security on the real but rarely spoken condition that there be no married father in the household.

Until about 1960, the income gap between backs and whites was narrowing. After 1960, with the surge in single-parent households, it began to reverse itself. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Moynihan believed, would only increase frustration.

As a result of the "full recognition of their civil rights," blacks were expecting that equal opportunities would "produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups," but, added Moynihan, "This is not going to happen."

The civil rights movement was designed to combat institutional white racism. With that battle won, movement leaders had to pretend the battle was still raging. To preserve that illusion, they pressured Johnson to silence Moynihan. Not wanting to alienate a voting bloc whose loyalties he had hoped to purchase, Johnson exiled Moynihan and deep-sixed his report.

With Moynihan publicly spanked, other would-be critics fell silent. Those who chose to tell the truth about the fatherhood crisis in the black community did so at their own risk. Among the most notable dissidents was comedian Bill Cosby.

In the early years of this century, before his fall from grace, Cosby spoke out forcefully to men and boys at forums across the country. "Men, if you want to win, we can win," Cosby said at one typical spot. "We are not a pitiful race of people. We are a bright race, who can move with the best. But we are in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal."

The progressive establishment had no use for talk that questioned systemic racism. With the establishment's backing, rising "antiracist" rock star Ta-Nehisi Coates made his bones putting Cosby in his place. In an overpraised 2008 Atlantic article, Coates dared to scold Cosby for his presumed ignorance of black history.

"His historical amnesia — his assertion that many of the problems that pervade black America are of a recent vintage — is simply wrong," huffed Coates, "as is his contention that today's young African Americans are somehow weaker, that they've dropped the ball." The fact that Cosby was nearly 40 years his senior counted for nothing. Coates knew he had the progressive wind at his back. History was his to dictate.

A month later, perhaps unaware of Coates's ascendancy, presidential candidate Barack Obama echoed Cosby's message in a Father's Day speech at a Chicago church. "What too many fathers also are is missing, missing from too many lives and too many homes," he lectured his audience. "They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it."

Jesse Jackson might have let these general comments pass. He had once said similar things himself. When, however, Obama spelled out the statistical consequences of fatherlessness in regards to education, employment, and incarceration, he jeopardized the "systemic racism" paradigm that made Jackson wealthy. He had to shut Obama up.

Three weeks later, a hot mic at a Fox News studio picked Jackson up saying, "See, Barack been, um, talking down to Black people on this faith-based — I wanna cut his nuts out." If the words weren't enough to silence Obama, the cutting motion he made with his hand did the trick.

Ketanji Brown Jackson had no more use for Obama's truth-telling than Jesse did. "Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens," writes Jackson. "They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations."

The 53-year-old Jackson and the 69-year old Sotomayor seem to have both sleep-walked through their charmed, affirmative action—greased lives. The income and educational gaps were not "created in the distant past." They were created on their watch and largely by their own political party.

Neither Jackson nor Sotomayor acknowledges that those gaps were narrowing up and through the 1950s. Neither says a word about fatherlessness or family breakdown and the accompanying reversal in economic momentum. Sotomayor, for instance, mentions President Andrew Johnson three times but never once mentions President Lyndon Johnson. No one mentions Moynihan.

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

Cruel: Jussie Smollett Will Be Forced To Share A Jail Cell With His Attacker

2022-03-11

[Babylon Bee] People are protesting in the streets today after human rights groups revealed Jussie Smollett will be forced to share a jail cell with his racist attackers.

"This is an outrage!" said Reverend Jesse Jackson. "Not only was Mr. Smollett attacked by hateful racist bigots who want to tear our country apart, but now he has to share a jail cell with them? This is cruel and unusual punishment. This is the kind of thing that happens in our white supremacist country. Send me money!"

Criminal justice watchdogs also revealed that in addition to sharing a cell with his attackers, he will have to share his toothbrush, his bunk bed, and clothes. They expressed worry that this may lead to Jussie Smollet suffering further racist and homophobic attacks from other attackers named Jussie Smollett while in prison.

When asked for comment, Jussie Smollet angrily yelled "This is MAGA country!" before punching himself in the face.

Link

-War on Police-

Jussie Smollett Sentenced to 150 days

2022-03-11

[Yahoo] Former "Empire" star Jussie Smollett

...Cable TV actor whose primary talents seemed to be being black and being homosexual. In a bid for national attention, he paid a pair of Nigerian brothers to rough him up a little so he could claim that two large, white, MAGA hat-wearing men had shouted This is MAGA country! while thumping him at 2:30am on a bitter cold night in Chicago and throwing bleach on him, presumably to lighten him up. The story quickly unraveled, and he became a laughingstock and the poster boy for pretend victimization and attention whoredom...
was sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months felony probation and to pay restitution to the city of reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
, and a fine of $25,000 on Thursday, after he was found guilty last December on charges that he staged a hate-crime attack against himself in 2019. Judge James B. Linn stated that the evidence against Smollett was "overwhelming" and that the jury’s verdict in his case was "correct."..

Former "Empire" star Jussie Smollett was sentenced to 150 days in jail, 30 months felony probation and to pay restitution to the city of Chicago, and a fine of $25,000 on Thursday, after he was found guilty last December on charges that he staged a hate-crime attack against himself in 2019. Judge James B. Linn stated that the evidence against Smollett was "overwhelming" and that the jury’s verdict in his case was "correct."

Smollett, who had waived his right to comment before the verdict, announced he was "not suicidal" and "innocent." He repeatedly stated that he is "not suicidal," insisting that if anything happens to him in jail, that he would never take his own life.

Linn rejected the defense’s request for a new trial after arguments were made by his lawyers at the lengthy sentencing hearing...

"There is nothing I can do here that can come close to the damage you’ve done to your own life," Linn told Smollett before issuing his verdict, adding he took the actor-singer’s character into account in making his decision, as well as the glowing endorsements from Jesse Jackson and Derrick Johnson.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Black Panther Defense Minister Leaves Congress to Spend More Time With His Hate Group

2022-01-09

[FrontPage] Rep. Bobby Rush, the former Deputy Minister of Defense for the Black Panthers, announced that he’s joining his fellow Democrats fleeing the sinking ship ahead of the midterms, not for political reasons mind you, but in order to spend more time with his grandchildren.

"We plan to arm the total black community so when the pigs come down on us, we will be equal," Rush once bragged. "We advocate offensive violence against the power structure... we are at war and the Minister of Defense must be in charge."

As a House Democrat, Rush, suffering from criminal hypocrisy and a broken mirror, falsely claimed during the BLM riots that President Trump "wants to instigate a race war".

A month after two police officers were murdered, the cops finally raided a Black Panther apartment where Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Chicago chapter, was holed up. This time around, the Panthers got the worst of the exchange. Rush, who had been there hours earlier, emerged at Jesse Jackson’s service, claiming that he had been marked for death by the cops.

"If I was out on the street, they would have shot me down," he claimed.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Illinois Dem fired over 'reprehensible' tweets calling Waukesha Christmas parade 'karma'

2021-11-24

[NYPOST] The Illinois Democratic social media director who called the deadly Christmas parade rampage in Wisconsin "karma" for the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse has been fired over her "callous and reprehensible posts."

Mary Lemanski sparked outrage with posts suggesting the Waukesha killer drove his SUV through paraders Sunday — killing five and injuring dozens — because he "probably felt threatened" like teen gunman Rittenhouse had during the state’s riots last year in Kenosha.

"It was probably just self-defense," she also tweeted on her since-deleted page, suggesting the suspect — a convicted pedophile with a lengthy rap sheet — "came to help people," again like Rittenhouse testified he had done.

"You reap what you sow," she wrote, saying, "I just believe in Karma and this came around quick on the citizens of Wisconsin."

Link

-Land of the Free

It Will Take More Than the Rittenhouse Verdict To Vindicate American Justice

2021-11-24

By Conrad Black

[NYSun] It is undoubtedly true that the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was a victory over dishonest and overreaching prosecutors, over a largely dishonest national press, and over the same elements that produced mob rule in Kenosha in the summer of 2020.

The jurors, in their questions and their diligence, clearly overcame the immense media bias against Mr. Rittenhouse, and the intermittent chanting and howling by mobs outside the courthouse

...led by members of Antifa/BLM/Black Block “activists”...

of often rather explicit threats against the jurors if they did not convict. The case was widely misrepresented as a trial of white-supremacist vigilantism intruding into Wisconsin from outside to aggravate the oppression of blacks in Kenosha.

...whereas in reality young Mr. Rittenhouse went there as a naive, independent supporter of the Black Lives Matter idea, though perhaps no longer of BLM Inc...

The jurors deduced that the defendant was invited to Kenosha by his family, had been asked to help defend an automobile dealership in the event of violence, was a legal carrier of the specific weapon that he owned, which was legally in the home of relatives in Kenosha.

The initial portrayal of the case, including by then-candidate Joe Biden, of white supremacist violence, was exposed as defamatory fiction, and even the prosecution witnesses powerfully contributed to the perception that Mr. Rittenhouse, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, had acted in self-defense.

It emerged that he was a well motivated and presentable young man, a good kid, and in no way a troublemaker or a bigot, contrary to what was instantly claimed by most of the media, all the way up to and through the trial.

The judge, too, deserves credit for criticizing the prosecution when it attempted to construe the defendant’s previous silence as an acknowledgment of guilt, in plain contravention of approximately 50 years of overwhelming constitutional interpretation, and for the prosecution’s attempt to hold that shooting someone had no legal character of self-defense if the gunshot victim was himself not armed.

The footage of the defendant being kicked in the face by one of those he shot, bashed over the head with the skateboard by another, and responding in the third case to having a gun pointed at his face at point-blank range, were all of great assistance to the defense.

Yet as the facts unfolded, and the lies of the press and political lynch mob that had attempted to try and convict young Mr. Rittenhouse for the last 15 months before the matter could get to court were exposed, there was no accommodation of the sharply evolving picture of what had actually occurred in Kenosha on August 25, 2020.

Not only did the defendant’s good character and background come to light; the fact that the two deceased and the other complainant party were all rioters and to some extent vandals and bullies, did not visibly shake the prosecution in its determination to proceed with four counts of actual or attempted homicide, plus a related lesser count.

Read the rest at the link

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

Vivek Ramaswamy: Coca-Cola Virtue Signals While Its Products Spread Obesity, Diabetes

2021-11-22

[Breitbart] Vivek Ramaswamy, author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, contrasted Coca-Cola’s advocacy for left-wing racial politics with its sale of sugar-based soft drinks in the context of contemporary widespread diabetes and obesity, particularly among black Americans.

Ramaswamy said large corporations posture as virtuous through "woke" political messaging to deflect from the depravity of their business operations and harm caused by their products. He linked Coca-Cola’s sale of high-sugar beverages to the ubiquity of metabolic disease, as well as Nike’s use of inexpensive workers in Asian countries.

Multinational corporations align themselves with false narratives pushed by left-wing news media, Ramaswamy observed. He noted Coca-Cola’s and Nike’s advocacy for narratives associated with the Black Lives Matter campaign and operation.

"Corporate America loves that moment being presented to itself," he stated. "If you’re Coca-Cola, you would rather issue statements about a new voting law in Georgia or teach employees how to be ’less white’ than to deal with your own products’ impact on the nationwide epidemic of diabetes and obesity, including in the black community that it’s supposed to care so much about."

Link

Good Morning

2021-08-29

Jesse Jackson moved to rehab,
wife Jacqueline to ICU in COVID treatment

Sunday August 29th, 2021

Last British flight evacuating civilians from Afghanistan leaves Kabul

marenglish

White House: Biden Not Firing Any Generals, Has Full Confidence in Blinken		Houthi court in the Yemeni capital Sanaa has sentenced 11 Yemenis to death on charges of aiding %u201Cthe enemy.%u201D
Biden vows 'diplomacy first' with Iran over its nuclear program		France and Britain will urge the United Nations to work for the creation of a %u2018safe zone%u2019 in the Afghan capital Kabul to protect humanitarian operations
ISIS attack that targeted Kabul airport was a challenge directed towards the Taliban not the US, Russia's Ambassador to Afghanistan Dmitry Zhirnov says		Democrats Demand Reparations and Open Borders for Afghan Migrants

47 Victims Rescued, 102 Arrested
in Multi-State Human Trafficking Operation

Link

-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

Jesse Jackson moved to rehab, wife Jacqueline to ICU in COVID treatment

2021-08-29

[NYPOST] The Rev. Jesse Jackson has been moved to a physical rehabilitation center, while his wife Jacqueline was transferred to the intensive care unit at the hospital where the two were undergoing treatment for COVID-19.

The 79-year-old political activist and minister and his 77-year-old wife were admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...
last weekend.

Family members said in a statement Friday that Jacqueline Jackson was moved to the ICU and was receiving oxygen, but breathing on her own.

The statement said that Jesse Jackson’s coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)

...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
symptoms were subsiding, and that a hospital focused on physical rehabilitation due to his Parkinson’s disease.

"As his COVID-19 symptoms abate, his Parkinson’s has become more in focus. Therefore, he has been transferred to The Shirley Ryan Ability Lab where he will immediately begin intensive occupational and physical therapy," said a statement from Jonathan Jackson, through the Rainbow Push Coalition.

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

VDH - What Is American Wokeness Really About?

2021-07-30

[E-Times] Most Americans were as indifferent to the U.S. women’s soccer team’s recent loss to Sweden in the Olympics as they were excited about the team’s World Cup win in 2019. In between was the team’s nonstop politicking, from whining about compensation to virtue-signaling their disrespect for the United States. The celebrity face of the team, perennial scold Megan Rapinoe, is going the way of teenage grouch Greta Thunberg, becoming more pinched the more she is tuned out.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac used her corporate grifting to buy four homes. The one she bought in California’s Topanga Canyon is surrounded by a new $35,000 security fence.

Critical race theory guru Ibram X. Kendi offers virtual, one-hour workshops for $20,000 a pop. He is franchising woke re-education kits—in between bouts of damning capitalism as a catalyst of racism.

The woke movement is a slicker, more sophisticated and far more grandiose version of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson’s shakedowns of the 1990s. Those, at least, were far more honest in leveraging cash with charges of racism—and came without the academic gobbledygook of critical race theory.

Our freeways are jammed. Airports are crammed. Labor is short. Huge pent-up consumer demand for essentials and entertainment outpaces supply. Yet Major League Baseball’s recent All-Star Game saw record low television viewership—about a quarter of the audience of 40 years ago, when there were 100 million fewer Americans.

The Summer Olympic Games are getting anemic TV ratings. The NBA’s crashing TV ratings have followed the downward trajectory of the NFL’s ratings. Woke sports earn the same public disgust as the accusatory and boring Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards.

Cable news networks CNN and MSNBC fueled the story that former President Donald Trump allegedly colluded with Russia. They contextualized (to excuse) the summer looting and rioting of 2020. And they cheered on two impeachments as a prelude to their 24/7 woke drumbeat. Their ratings, too, have now dived.

Never has TV been more politicized. Sitcoms, dramas, and commercials are designed more to resonate woke messaging than to entertain. So naturally, dismal TV ratings reflect the expected public boredom that ensues when art serves politics.

How many times will disingenuous Dr. Anthony Fauci swear that he never sent federal money to the Wuhan virology lab for gain-of-function research, or blame his critics for pointing out his gyrating advice on masks, or offer yet another noble lie on herd immunity?

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Michelle Claims to 'Live in Fear,' Barack Actually Does

2021-05-10

[American Thinker] On Friday’s broadcast of "CBS This Morning," Michelle Obama made the delusional claim, one among several, that "many of us still live in fear as we go to the grocery store, or walking our dogs, or allowing our children to get a license."

Had Michelle attributed that fear to a wariness of black drive-by gang bangers or street muggers, it might have made some sense. But her fear, she implied, was of racist police.

Barack Obama knows better, but he has lived in fear as well. That fear deformed his presidency and sent the nation spiraling down a lethal rabbit hole that has benefitted no one more than the Mao-loving matrons of BLM.

Not surprisingly, as I learned in researching my forthcoming book, Barack Obama’s Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply, there is no one Barack fears more than wife Michelle, his personal emissary from the world of authentic African-Americans.

In a May 2011 interview, activist professor Cornel West nailed Obama on this fear. "All he has known culturally is white," said West. "He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening."

Obama had reason to be frightened. Following a Father’s Day speech by Obama at a largely black Chicago church in 2008, Jesse Jackson was heard on a hot mic at a Fox News studio saying, "See, Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith-based—I wanna cut his nuts out."

Here Jackson made a sharp slicing motion with his hands and continued, "Barack—he’s talking down to black people—telling n*****s how to behave." In the original, as one might expect, Jackson did not speak in asterisks.

Obama had made the rookie mistake of attributing the absurd crime rate in America’s black neighborhoods to fatherlessness. Jackson, Chicago’s most prominent baby daddy, suggested that a leftward course correction was in order, and Obama cravenly obliged him.

Obama does not talk about Jackson’s comments in his memoir, A Promised Land. That’s a shame. Team Obama’s behind-the-scenes response to the Jackson threat might have enticed even a Republican or two to buy the book. What seems clear, though, is that Jesse Jackson’s very authenticity scared Obama. When Jackson ran for president in 1988, no one questioned his birthplace or his roots or his eligibility.

Link

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