Rep. Hunter: Trump is doing the 'right thing' on North Korea

Iraq war veteran Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, says that President Donald Trump is doing the "right thing" in confronting North Korea.

Chris Kennedy attacks Rahm, accuses him of purposely driving blacks from Chicago

After ignoring years of begging by Illinois Democrats to run for statewide office, Chris Kennedy, the son of RFK, finally threw his hat into the ring a year ago when he announded he was running for governor.

Things haven't worked out for him because a far richer man, JB Pritzker, has collected the lion's share of endorsements from other Democratic politicians and their powerful union allies, despite the Pritzker family's checkered history with organized labor.

So what is Kennedy to do? He has no personal charm and no ideas either for Illinois, a state with intractable problems that include rampant corruption, declining population, and one of the worst pension debts among the states, a problem largely created by public-sector unions that are linked at the hip to the Democrats. But the equally charmless Pritzker, other than his wallet and his political cronies, has nothing going for him either, so he is constantly attacking Donald Trump, who has not stepped foot in Illinois since he was elected president.

Here's Kennedy's plan: attack unpopular Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel--and use the race card as well, since Trump as a target belongs to Pritzker.

From WGN-TV:

Kennedy unloaded on Mayor Emanuel and accused him of leading a gentrification strategy to push out people of color.

"I believe that black people are being pushed out of Chicago intentionally by a strategy that involved disinvestment in communities being implemented by the city administration," he said. "And I believe Rahm Emanuel is at the head of the city administration and therefore needs to be held responsible for those outcomes."

Kennedy says minorities are not leaving the city by choice.

"I believe this is involuntary that we’re cutting off funding for schools, cutting off funding for police, allowing people to be forced to live in food deserts, closing hospitals. … The city is becoming smaller, and as it becomes smaller, it’s becoming whiter."

What a bunch of crap.

In sheer numbers as well as a percentage black populations are declining in many major cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and even Detroit. African-Americans are like everyone else--they don't like runaway crime and dysfunctional government schools.

For the kids: Chicago Public Schools employees stole $250K in gift cards meant for students

Chicago Public Schools employees allegedly filched gift cards intended for students.

How many people have been arrested? How many have been fired?

Zero.

From WGN-TV:

An investigation by the Inspector General found they took more than $250,000 in gift cards over three years.

One principal stole gift cards and other materials for students with special needs.

Another principal used $22,000 in school funds for personal purchases at Costco and Apple stores.

Funds were used at another school for a "teacher's lunch club" that included lobster, shrimp and steak.

With some form of bankruptcy a judge can use the legal equivalent of Ajax to clean out this cesspool.

Trailer: Top Ten Most Violent Neighborhoods in Chicago

Somehow Victor J. Maggio, my good friend and a great patriot, walked the same hallways at Carl Sandburg High School in Orland Park, Illinois--and I never noticed him.

That's a pity.

But now Victor and I are covering the same beat by way of blogging, the blood-stained streets of Chicago.

Maggio does much more video work than I do--and he's about ready to release his magnum opus, the Top Ten Most Violent Neighborhoods of Chicago.

Below is the trailer.

Mark Dice: CNN Turning Over a New Leaf for 2018

Kids, the word for today is "irony," which is not a "banned word," as fake-news is

Mark Dice explaines. explains.

Trump to give out fake news awards on Monday

Finally there will be an awards show that won't have any bashing of the Republican Party.

I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018

"I will be announcing the most corrupt and dishonest media awards of the year," President Donald J. Trump announced on Twitter Tuesday night "Subjects will cover dishonesty and bad reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!"

United Van Lines: Illinois most moved-from state in 2017

Illinois bicentennial flag

on bottom

It's Illinois' bicentennial year. But there is not much to celebrate.

From ABC 7 Chicago:

A new study ranks Illinois as the No. 1 most moved from state last year.

According to the 2017 National Movers Study by United Van Lines, more residents moved out of Illinois than into Illinois, with 63 percent of moves being outbound.

In 2017, Illinois moved up one spot on the outbound list to No. 1, ranking in the top five for the past nine years.

Folks are apparently fed up with rampant corruption, malfeasance, cronyism, and high crime rates.

Why am I still here?

The abandoned homes of Detroit's Delray neighborhood

One of Detroit's overlooked neighborhoods is Delray, an intriguing place on the southwestern end of the city. Its borders are Fort Street to the northwest, McKinney Street to the northeast, the Detroit River and Zug Island to the southeast, and Woodmere Street to the southwest.

Welcome back from what? Bankruptcy? This car wash banner is in River Rouge, a suburb that borders Delray. Between here and residential Delray is a massive sewage facility.

A fire-damaged Delray home.

According to Wikipedia, Delray was incorporated as a village in 1897. Its population was about 5,000. Seven years later Detroit annexed Delray. In 1930 24,000 people lived here. Now just 2,100 or so do. What a fall. So it's no wonder that again according to Wikipedia the Detroit Metro Times called the neighborhood "the closest thing to a ghost town within a city."

Delray was the first neighborhood that I visited in my second and most recent trip to the Motor City two months ago.

Selfies make me look fat.

Delray may be headed for extinction.

From the Detroit Free Press in December:

In a city with plenty of rough neighborhoods, Delray is regarded as one of the worst. It’s been called Detroit’s backwater, its underbelly, the bowels of the region — which it literally is, in a sense, since the city’s wastewater treatment plant is here, receiving and incinerating the contents of everyone’s toilets in Detroit and 77 surrounding communities and filling the air for miles with a God-awful stink 

The Free Press goes on to explain that a proposed bridge, which would be the third between Windsor, Canada and Detroit, along with an adjoining customs center, might all but eliminate Delray.

To the left is a small portion of the Zug Island industrial park. In the foreground is an abandoned retail two flat with apartments.

That's Zug Island, photographed from the opposite bank of the River Rouge. US Steel operates an iron and coke mill here. Visitors are prohibited, which has led to the many urban legends about the place, which include it housing a secret prison, or that scenes from the first Robocop movie were filmed there. Neither are true. Some call it Detroit's Area 51.

The destination for the ill-fated final voyage of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was Zug Island.

Delray on the left, Zug Island on the right.

By all accounts Zug Island and the area around it, including Delray, is highly polluted. Residents complain about the smells, but I didn't notice any foul odors when I was here. But every ten minutes or so I saw a truck passing though Delray with steaming slag from Zug Island. Amazingly, there are surprisingly few internet references to this phenomenon. As with the el trains outside Elwood Blues' room in the flophouse in The Blues Brothers, I guess they pass by "so often that you won't even notice it."

This stuff is hot!

Residents of Windsor complain of a mysterious hum, which has been traced to Zug.

Another abandoned storefront.

Delray's population is roughly split three ways between whites, blacks, and Hispanics. It was renowned for its large Hungarian-American population. Holy Cross Holy Cross Hungarian Church still offers services--in both English and Hungarian.

Just two days ago All Saints Catholic Church, a predominately Hispanic church, closed.

In most cities houses such as this one are quickly demolished. But not this one at 735 Sloan.

From 1842 until 1948 Fort Wayne, named for Revolutionary War general Anthony "Mad Anthony" Wayne was an active army base in Delray, it's now an historical park. As it was not open on the days I was in Detroit, I was unable to visit. That was a real pity. Fort Wayne was built for a war between the British Empire and Canada that never came.

Detroit is the seat of Wayne County, which is also named for Wayne.

Lonely Planet picked Detroit as its number two choice of cities to visit this year. Having places like Fort Wayne opened seven days a week might seal the deal to be its top pick.

If Claude Monet was an urban explorer he would have painted this scene for sure.

My obligatory "Detroit alley" shot.

"Dumpers beware!" Someone is fighting back. As I explained in earlier post, illegal dumping is a serious problem in Detroit. Much of that dumping is committed by suburbanites.

Here's a mess that you can't blame on jerks from the boonies. That rubble came from the building, or what is left of it, in the background.

As with many other Detroit neighborhoods,. there is an eerie quietness in Delray.

Here's another "Monet shot," at the corner of Gould and Harrington.

I observed some odd behavior on this corner. As soon as I parked my Honda Civic a man in a pickup truck parked right behind me and he stared in my direction for five minutes, creeping me out as I looked into my rear view mirror. Across the street an attractive young woman stood on her front porch--she stared at me as well. Then a sedan pulled up a few minutes later--the woman hopped in.

Perhaps it was nothing.

Just come on in!

This is the corner of Jefferson and Green. How long has that tree been sitting on that sidewalk? Six weeks later I'll wager you that it is still there.

Not much left here.

And not much left here either.

The root of Detroit's widespread tire dumping problem is a Michigan law that compels tire sellers to charge a recycling fee for each replaced tire. So far so good. But many retailers charge anywhere from $3 to $8 per tire for the betterment of the planet--then pay shady operators far less to, well, not deliver these tires to recycling centers. The cash spread fattens the profit of those retailers, who of course know exactly what is really going on.

Exit stage center. See you all soon!

Trump sides with Iranian people over mullahs

President Donald J. Trump is on the side of the Iranian people. They are protesting the crooked radicals misruling Iran.

The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their “pockets.” The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

"The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime," Trump Tweeted this morning. "All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their “pockets.” The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!"

The protests across Iran are gaining momentum. Tragically, 21 people are dead, most if not all of them were protesters.

These protests are different than the ones in 2009. Those were a mainly and urban middle class phenomenon while this latest round began in a rural conservative region of Iran. Obama looked the other way during the Green Revolution of 2009, as we now know, he was desperate to get any Iranian nuclear deal signed, no matter how bad it was for America.

Seattle soda tax shows how liberalism works: Most of money set aside for poor goes to overead and hiring more staff

Blogger in Seattle

Cook County, Illinois, where I live, dropped a nearly-unanimously unpopular one-cent-per ounce sugary-drinks after only a few months.

As I've written many, many times, sin taxes almost always fall short of revenue forecasts. Buyers either shop in lower-tax jurisdictions or they consume less of the sinful goods. This will be the case in Seattle too.

Anyway, Daniel Beekman of the left-wing Seattle Times explains that the Emerald City's 1.75-cent-per-ounce soda tax is expected to collect $15 million in its first year. It won't. I guarantee it. Beekman dutifully points the plunge in soda sales after Philadelphia added its soda tax, but of course leaves out the Cook County repeal.

That's one of the tactics of leftist journalists--the sin of omission.

Some of that money, however much it will be, is supposed to go to a nutritious food voucher program called Fresh Bucks, $2 million. Beekman does expose dishonesty within the planned soda tax expenditures for Fresh Bucks.

From Beekman's article:

Fresh Bucks is one of several nutrition and education programs slated to receive funding from the tax.

But not every dollar will reach Seattle families. Only $400,000 of the tax revenue set aside for Fresh Bucks in 2018 will be spent on produce vouchers.

The rest of the $2 million for Fresh Bucks is aimed at administrative costs, such as outreach, technology and hiring five additional city employees to carry out the program’s expansion.

Ya got that? Most of Fresh Bucks money--75 percent of it--won't go to the families who need it but for overhead and more city workers. Taxes are being used by government to expand government--feeding the beast.

Niles, Illinois last summer

And unlike the Crook County sweetened beverage tax, the Seattle version won't include diet sodas. So count on it--plenty of Seattleites will drop their love for sugar and guzzle diet drinks, saving $2.52 on a twelve-pack.

Liberals don't understand human nature, particularly when it comes to economics.