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CHICAGO - House Speaker Mike Madigan, who is commonly identified as Official A in an extensive federal investigation, had four of his closest political associates plead "not guilty" today in front of a federal court judge.
Madigan has yet to be charged in the Commonwealth Edison bribery scheme being investigated by the US States Attorney for Northern Illinois.
The four facing prosecution include longtime Madigan associate Mike McClain, former Com Ed head Anne Pramaggiore, John Hooker, and former City Club Chairman Jay Doherty - all will face trial beginning in March 2021.
In light of this growing investigation, Republican State Rep. Amy Grant called for Madigan to resign from his State House seat.
"As ‘Public Official A’ in the government’s sprawling case, Speaker Madigan is clearly at the epicenter of the U.S government’s corruption probe," Grant said in a statement. "It’s past time for Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan to resign; not just from the Speakership, but also from the House of Representatives."
Fifteen Democrats have stated they will not support Madigan for speaker in January. If that number holds firm, Madigan will likely not be re-elected as House Speaker.
CHICAGO - Governor JB Pritzker said Wednesday during his daily COVID-19 press briefing that Illinois reached a "solemn milestone" - 238 COVID-related deaths in 24 hours.
"We have far-surpassed our previous single day high report of 191 in mid-May," Pritzker said. Higher case numbers, higher hospitalizations end with higher numbers of deaths. "I offer my sincerest and deepest condolences."
Admitting some of these cases may be the result of delayed reporting after the Thanksgiving holiday, Pritzker urged Illinoisans to remain cautious.
"Wear your masks, keep your distance. STay home whenever you can. We'll get through this," he said.
We are told that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, with 81 million votes to Donald Trump’s 74 million.
We can dismiss for the moment that it’s the electoral college that chooses the president, because the popular vote is still relevant; it’s just encapsulated, state by state, as it is traditionally the key driver for the state legislators who choose the electors. So, yes, the popular votes do matter.
Let’s take a moment to look at these numbers. 81 million to 74 million. Pretty impressive. But numbers alone are meaningless in a vacuum. Let’s look at them in context, shall we?
Ordinarily, health care is an important issue. But in 2021, health care will remain especially significant, given the toll the pandemic has taken. As 2020 ends, many are wondering what is in store for the American health care system in the immediate future.
Joe Biden, who will likely become president next year, has suggested he will seek to expand on the failed “Obamacare” system by including a public option, colloquially known as “Bidencare.”
Biden’s website makes claims of “choice” and “access” to health care, but this is false. The idea that undermining the private sector and competition from health insurance would create an abundance of affordable, innovative options lacks credibility.
A federal tax on employees who work from home (WFH) could be used to compensate workers who don’t have that option, says Luke Templeman, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, an international financial services company based in Frankfurt, Germany.
“[R]emote workers are contributing less to the infrastructure of the economy whilst still receiving its benefits,” Templeman writes in an article in Konzept, Deutsche Bank’s research magazine, published on November 10.
Work at home has more benefits than costs to the individual, and those who do not have that opportunity lose out on those benefits, Templeman writes. Telecommuters should have to give money to those workers, Templeman argues.
Why do we treat two equally bloody ideologies in such starkly different ways?
If someone were to ask you to think of either extreme of the political spectrum, odds are you would immediately picture a swastika at one end and a hammer and sickle at the other. Regardless of your views on the left-right paradigm or whether or not you subscribe to horseshoe theory, we (rightfully) tend to perceive fascism and communism as the standard ideologies of the extreme.
As such, many of us would also feel rather uneasy seeing those two symbols. Upon seeing a swastika, we are immediately reminded of the evils of the Nazi regime and are accordingly repulsed. To publicly display the logo is even a crime in many European countries. We understand how abhorrent the ideology is and treat it accordingly with disrespect and disgust.
But how do we react to the hammer and sickle? I don’t have to write an article explaining the millions of deaths that occurred at the hands of communist regimes; like the Holocaust, the gulags of the Soviet Union and killing fields of Cambodia are widely known.
Illegal election law changes have gone on everywhere, like this example in Georgia where “Republican” Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, has been caught using Dominion’s Eric Coomer as a witness for the state to defend last minute computer changes. As said by David Cross, an attorney for the plaintiffs: "Software upgrade is being made without adequate security testing or certification from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Instead of whining about Trump “dumping” him in an editorial, Raffensberger and the Georgia media should have been talking about the allegedbig lie (“water main break”) behind the naked fraud in Fulton County, Georgia,where unsupervised election voters were allegedly caught on video as they messed with voting machines after a pipe supposedly burst in the room with the ballots.
For those of us that have been taught real history back when it was honestly taught in school, it is absolutely horrific to listen to liberals tell our kids that America was built on slavery, not freedom and that America is systematically racist. That is simply absurd and provably wrong. Let’s start with the most obvious proof that liberal claim is untrue. First, every nation on Earth has had slavery at one time or another including those nations in Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe. America was one of the first nations in the world to make slavery illegal. Did everybody forget that 650,000 Americans died in the Civil War to end slavery in America in 1865 when America was just 82 years old (The American Revolution was won in 1783)? The Republican led Union Army fought the Democrat led Confederate Army to free the slaves and they won. And the Republicans successfully passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments by 1870 to end slavery, make African-Americans citizens, and gave them the right to vote when our country was just 87 years old. Many nations in the world practiced slavery for hundreds if not thousands of years. Mauritania in Africa did not make slavery illegal and a crime until 2007!!!
There was a saying that became popular in the early days of the Vietnam War. Politicians who were repeatedly wrong-or caught lying about a body count or the prospects for winning the conflict-were said to be suffering from a “credibility gap.”
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary even gave the phrase its own entry:
Credibility gap, n (1966) 1 a : a lack of trust <a credibility gap between generations> b : lack of believability <a credibility gap created by contradictory official statements> 2 a : DISCREPANCY <the credibility gap between the professed ideals...and their actual practices>
My edition, the tenth, is from 2000, so an excellent update to this entry would be a picture of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
At almost the same time that he was calling for restrictive COVID-19 guidelines for nearly all of the Golden State’s 40 million citizens, he had no qualms about attending a lobbyist friend’s 50th birthday party in an upscale Napa Valley French restaurant.
Late last week, Johns Hopkins University Newsletter ran a study from Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins, that looked at the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths according to data from the CDC.
What the study concluded, and the article said, was something quite profound. The study concluded that the virus had “relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.” However, the university took down the story saying it may lead to "misinformation" about the virus' effects.
A .pdf file of the original article is available on the John Hopkins' student newsletter site HERE.
The study and its removal raised questions from all serious observers. How could the study's findings be? How do they match with the facts of over 200,000 people listed as dying from the virus?
The Mayflower Compact was important because it was the first document to establish self-government in the New World. It remained active until 1691 when Plymouth Colony became part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Mayflower Compact was an early, successful attempt at democracy and undoubtedly played a role in future colonists seeking permanent independence from British rule and shaping the nation that eventually became the United States of America.
There were arguments among the 102 Mayflower passengers as to whether the compact should be rewritten when they landed on Plymouth Rock rather than the northern part of Virginia as originally planned. It was somewhat amended as to locations noted, but the point remained: They - from Great Britain, France and Ireland - started their journey "for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith ..."
It was over a year later - in 1621 - that the Pilgrims and native Americans together celebrated the First Thanksgiving.
The full text of the Mayflower Compact is as follows:
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc.:
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another; covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
SPRINGFIELD - Key IL GOP leaders have been vocal for days and weeks about the 2020 presidential election, demanding President Trump concede. Others are saying it's too soon, that the process needs to play itself out.
RNC National Committeewoman Demetra DeMonte told Illinois Review this week that calls for Trump to concede from fellow Republicans are premature.
"We gave Al Gore 37 days to work through the process in 2000," DeMonte said. "That's the least we can do for President Trump."
"It's very simple," Durkin, who was also a leading 2016 John Kasich supporter, said with a smirk. "The election is over. Begin the transition process... I hope the president understands there's no avenue for him to overturn the results..."
Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-16) is getting stronger and stronger with his demands that the Republican Party stop encouraging President Trump to fight the 2020 election results and instead force him to concede. Kinzinger, who was weakly challenged for another term, continues to line up with the anti-Trump faction of the party - both at the national and the state levels.
Two days ago, Kinzinger tweeted:
Now would be a great time to denounce this, @gop how embarrassing. Our party needs to be better than giving credence to these insane conspiracy theories. https://t.co/urkllgQKJi
Now that we have a randomized controlled trial (RCT) about masks, will it change what you do?
After being rejected by three major journals, an RCT completed by 4,862 participants has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The volunteers were adults spending more than 3 hours per day outside the home without occupational mask use. All were instructed to follow social-distancing and other public health measures, and those in the mask group were instructed to wear a mask when outside the home during the next month.
Infection with SARS-CoV-2 within one month occurred in 42 participants who were recommended to wear masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%). The difference of 0.3% was not statistically significant (p = 0.38). Ordinarily, this would be described as a negative study.
In September, October, and November, the dead voted.
This is stated as fact, by reporters and politicians, by attorneys and prosecutors. But it makes no sense. Zombies and vampires are fictional, the dead can’t really vote. So what does it mean when people say they did?
Well, sometimes, there’s a simple explanation: through the use of such tools as traditional absentee ballots and the recent explosion of mail-in voting and “early voting,” it’s possible for a person to vote legally in September or October and die on or before election day.
This does happen occasionally, but it’s a miniscule percentage of the “dead vote” that we’re talking about here.
Despite the frantic attempts to suppress holiday gatherings with lockdowns, the truth about all the scams will get out over the holidays. There has never been a better year to illustrate how those who have been labeled as “conspiracy nuts” have been right all along.
Reports of child abuse are skyrocketing. Naomi Schaefer Riley writes:
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced that, once again, the nation’s largest public school system would close, in response to spiking Covid-19 infections—throwing hundreds of thousands of children back into remote-learning environments. The human cost of school closures on children cannot be overstated. According to a new report from JAMA Network Open, the American Medical Association’s monthly open-access medical journal, “a total of 24.2 million children aged 5 to 11 attended public schools that were closed during the pandemic, losing a median of 54 days of instruction.” The report also declares that “missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost. This loss in life expectancy was likely to be greater than would have been observed if leaving primary schools open had led to an expansion of the first wave of the pandemic.”
Mounting evidence shows that pandemic-related lockdowns and restrictions have inflicted much more harm on younger people than the coronavirus itself. A new report reveals that nearly half of 18 to 24 year-olds are “showing at least moderate depressive symptoms," and for many the depression is severe.
Researchers at Harvard, Northeastern, Rutgers, and Northwestern universities conducted eight large survey rounds across all US states from April through October, finding that young adults are increasingly having suicidal thoughts. In the US adult population as a whole, the incidence of suicidal ideation typically hovers around 3.4 percent. But this new study reveals that in October, 36.9 percent of young adults had suicidal thoughts, compared to 32.2 percent in May in the wake of the first round of government lockdowns.
These new figures reinforce similarly dismal data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in August. The CDC found that one-quarter of young people ages 18-24 contemplated suicide in the previous month, in large part due to the pandemic and lockdowns.
How Social justice became a luxury good for the elite. Jonathan Kay writes:
The University of Michigan alone has nearly 100 full-time diversity-related administrative workers, more than a quarter of whom earned in excess of $100,000 in 2018. And at nearby Michigan State University, the newly appointed diversity director will earn a $315,000 salary. These people aren’t getting hired to tell students to toughen up and hit the books. Just the opposite: Their livelihoods depend on upholding the idea that navigating campus life is a difficult struggle, punctuated frequently by invisible forms of bigotry whose negative effects can be managed only through the intervention of a professionalized corps of trained diversity officers.
Many corporations are being pushed into wokeness. Tanner Aliffwrites:
Cancel culture is a black hole that is swallowing corporate America. The zeitgeist of social awareness and virtue signaling has spread far beyond the realm of adolescent Instagram posts to the point where corporate titans now have joined in the effort to push woke capitalism.
Don’t be fooled. Principles are hardly the reason companies are altering their marketing faces to appeal to progressive America.
