So Predictable

We predicted this barely twenty-four hours ago:

• Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday likened reopening Chicago to “slowly turning on a dimmer — not flipping a light switch” — and said the leap to the city’s Phase 3 plan will not allow her to reopen the lakefront.
  
  Last week, Lightfoot said people have been sending her “really interesting suggestions” about ways to reopen the lakefront — by doing it in phases and having “segmented hours for particular activities.” The mayor said she would consider those ideas whenever the city meets the rigid standards she has established to graduate to the so-called “Cautiously Reopen” Phase 3 of her five-step plan to slowly reopen the city.
  
  But during a virtual speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, Lightfoot delivered a heavy dose of bad news to Chicagoans with spring and cabin fever: “Unfortunately at this point, we will not be ready to reopen our lakefront” because a “resurgence in cases is more than a risk. It is a very real possibility we need to be prepared for.”

So when a few hundred Red Line Raiders head to downtown beaches because it's just too damn hot inside, we can expect mass arrests, even with the police outnumbered fifty-to-one?

How about the interior beaches at Humboldt, Douglass, Washington and Columbus Parks? Warm night, hundreds of people out seeking relief from the heat (that supposedly kills coronavirus). Is Groot and the alderassholes going to be out there clearing the parks? Because all the manpower is going to be at the lakefront.

It's obvious that Groot is taking direction from the coastal elites and not doing what is best for Chicagoans.

More Hogs Getting Fat

You (and we) can't get a drink, a tan or a haircut, but guess who's getting "stimulus" money?

• Navy Pier Inc., the clout-heavy not-for-profit whose president is paid more than $540,000 a year, has received a nearly $2.5 million coronavirus stimulus loan from the federal government toward salaries and other expenses.
  
  Facing what it says are losses of $10 million, Navy Pier Inc. says the loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection Program will cover expenses and the salaries of 147 employees, some who have been “sidelined” since the pier was shut down in March by the COVID-19 pandemic.
  
  The federal loan will be used to cover all salaries, including that of Marilyn Kelly Gardner, the Navy Pier Inc. president and chief executive officer whose salary, bonus and other compensation totaled $541,051 in 2018, according to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
  
  The company’s board of directors, which includes former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s daughter, spends more than $3 million a year on pay for Gardner and seven other top employees. That includes $419,204 for chief operating officer Brian Murphy, a former Chicago cop who was Daley’s deputy chief of staff, and $258,816 for vice president of operations Michael Degnan, the son of longtime Daley political adviser Timothy Degnan.

Home Depot is running short of tar, but Bed, Bath and Beyond has plenty of feather pillows available.

What a Hypocrite (Again)

This would be funny if it wasn't so blatantly obvious:

• Some communities around the state have made it known they plan to open for business soon, despite a stay-at-home order and the governor's reopening plan.
  
  Restaurants and bars have opened in Quincy. Police there say they will only issue warnings and let the state handle any further enforcement.
  
  During his daily news conference on Tuesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he would consider withholding federal funding to communities that won’t follow his plan.

So Fatass is going to use funding as a weapon to enforce his will?

But who was crying the loudest when the Federal government attempted to hold funding as a club over "sanctuary" states? And didn't they sue the Administration in court?

The Rule of Law Prevails

Good news from Cheeseland:

• Conservative justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ [months long] stay-at-home order in a ruling released Wednesday.
  
  The 4-3 decision marked the first time a state’s highest court has overturned a stay-at-home order amid the coronavirus pandemic and sided with Republican leaders who argued the governor’s administration had overstepped its legal authority.
  
  The court rejected the legislature’s request for a six-day stay to allow the GOP lawmakers and the governor to work out new rules. The court’s majority noted two weeks had passed since the court had taken up the case and it trusted the two parties “have been working in good faith to establish a lawful rule that addresses COVID-19 and its devastating effects on Wisconsin.”
  
  As of Wednesday night, neither the governor nor legislative leaders had offered an order or rules to serve as a replacement. That leaves Wisconsin as the only state in the nation without a single protective measure in place to combat the coronavirus, Evers’ office said.

The legislature isn't doing their job and the executive branch is operating as an unchecked branch of government with zero oversight. Sounds like Illinois and twenty other lawless states.

Legislatures should be in session during this "crisis," creating law and checking governors' "executive orders." Madigan is finally allowing the Illinois legislature back into session later this month, meaning that Illinois should be able to handle an election this November....right?

Layoffs and Closings

Who owns and operates the Hyatt Hotel chain? Anyone we know?

• Hyatt Hotels Corp. will begin laying off some 1,300 of its corporate employees around the world next month, including about 350 people in Chicago. The cuts represent roughly a third of the staff at its Chicago headquarters, a Hyatt spokesperson said Tuesday.
  
  The wave of pink slips is another result of the pandemic that’s ground travel to a halt, decimated demand for hotel rooms and rocketed the U.S. unemployment rate to a Depression-era level of 14.7%.
  
  Hyatt had looked to save money by making cuts to executive salaries and reducing other corporate employees’ pay and work schedules, but the hotel chain said these moves haven’t been enough to see the company through this “unprecedented challenge.”

Laying off 1,300 employees because there isn't any business coming to the industry.

And look at this:

• Steak ‘n Shake, which got its start in Normal in 1934, is closing 57 of its restaurants — about 10 percent of the total.
  
  The company is blaming fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, which forced the closure of all of the restaurant dining rooms, according to the company’s first-quarter report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

And this:

• Potbelly, the Chicago-based chain of sandwich shops, said Tuesday it is considering whether to close 100 locations, or about 23% of its total, as it scrambles to cut costs because of the pandemic.
  
  CEO Alan Johnson discussed the potential closings in his report of the company’s first-quarter earnings. Potbelly said it saw a dramatic downturn in its results once the coronavirus, which has forced closure of restaurant dining rooms, spread widely in the U.S. during March.

These situations aren't unique these days and there are thousands of employees who are now out of work. But it seems odd that Pritzker Hyatt Hotels can cut 1,300 employees because no money is coming in. Illinois (and Cook County and Chicago) also have no money coming in, and teachers sit home, assorted State employees aren't at work, courts are closed....and no one has missed a paycheck on the government end of things. Government doesn't have any money coming in either....and all these businesses closing means that much less ever coming in.

Qualifications?

Are we allowed to ask questions of our supposed betters? Because we have some questions about Putzker's choice to lead the Illinois Department of Public Health - the organization "guiding" Jabba into economic suicide:

• Gov. J.B. Pritzker has named a longtime Cook County Health doctor as director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
  
  Internist and pediatrician Dr. Ngozi Ezike will lead the department that works to protect the health and wellness of Illinoisans through disease and injury prevention, the governor’s office said in a statement today.
  
  Having spent more than 15 years at Cook County Health, Ezike currently serves as medical director at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, which provides secure temporary housing for youth awaiting adjudication. She previously served as medical director at Austin Health Center, delivered inpatient care at Stroger Hospital, and has provided primary and preventive care in community and school-based clinics, according to the statement.
  
  As a community-based physician, Ezike "took special interest in obesity, diabetes and breastfeeding—three public health issues she will be able to advocate for on a larger scale in her new role as the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health," Cook County Health CEO Dr. John Jay Shannon said in a statement.

An internist and pediatrician. Nothing about a background (or experience) in epidemiology and certainly nothing about a minor in Public Administration. In fact, her resume sounds extremely heavy on the political spectrum and awfully light on the practical application. That might be four-plus decades of cynicism as to local politics, but we're allowed to ask questions last time we checked, especially of someone who wasn't elected to make these sorts of decisions.

Close the Beaches!

Not here - but don't doubt that Groot is about to do this shortly:

• Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home restrictions will likely last for three more months to combat the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, county public health Director Barbara Ferrer said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
  
  “Based on all of the data that we’re looking at … we know with all certainty that we’ll be extending health officer orders for the next three months,” she said.

Remember when the politicians and doctors were telling everyone that heat and sunlight were deadly enemies of the virus? It had to be way back in 2020 or so. There are dozens of articles out lately that say Vitamin D is key to maintaining health against the virus. Vitamin D - the "sunlight vitamin" that everyone in the northern hemisphere seems to lack right about now?

Does anyone else know a better place to get plenty of heat and sunlight than a California beach? We think someone wrote songs about it....Sand Lads....Beach somethings..... You'd think that doctors would be encouraging everyone to go out in the sun and get a little exercise. But that wouldn't be politically expedient.

"Like a Drunken Sailor"

More money that Illinois cannot afford:

• There have been sightings of ISP troopers in Florida, guarding Putzker's family!!! Illinois taxpayers footing the bill?? Aren't we all in this together??? You are bankrupting people, ruining lives and your family is in a nonlock down state, protected by Illinois police at our expense!!!!!

Is Putzger reimbursing the State taxpayers for this unnecessary expenditure during a travel restricted pandemic lockdown?

Wake Info

From an emailer:

• The wake for Det. Todd Gillerlain is tomorrow in the 022nd District. Only family will be allowed in the funeral home. There will be a procession at 6:30 past his home and back to the funeral home. We know that the media trolls and the neighborhood Karens’ will be looking for a “gotcha” moment of police congregating. I and most of my fellow police officers in 022 think that the rules in effect are overblown political gamesmanship. Not saying that it’s imminent, but a policeman’s funeral is no place to send a message. All this being said, our Commander is a very good guy and 100% pro police and we don’t want him to receive any unnecessary grief from the media, the neighborhood complainers or the politicians. Please stay in your cars and adhere to the bs social distancing guidelines.

(comments closed here)

Fake Numbers?

You mean the people in charge of an unnecessary shutdown are lying to us?

• A Wirepoints analysis of COVID-19 deaths from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office reveals that 92 percent of victims from the virus had pre-existing medical conditions.*
  
  The medical examiner’s database showed COVID-19 as the primary cause of death for 2,303 people. Of those, 2,112 were shown to have at least one underlying condition as a secondary cause of death. Those conditions, also known as comorbidities, included hypertension, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. There were no secondary causes reported for 191 deaths.
  
  This finding is important because Gov. J.B. Pritzker has refused to release any statewide comorbidity data as part of his official Illinois Department of Health releases. Wirepoints asked for data directly from the governor’s office on April 21st, but we were told it was not available.

If someone isn't releasing numbers, it's probably because there's something to hide.

Nationwide, we've read that something like 60% of the fatalities were nursing home residents, but we didn't bookmark it.

Tuesday Air Show

Seeing as how everything will end up canceled at some point, there's a "fly-over tribute" scheduled for today:

• The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels will perform a flyover of Chicago on Tuesday, the Blue Angels announced on social media Sunday.
  
  Known for participating in Chicago Air and Water shows, the pilot squadron’s surprise Tuesday flyover will honor front-line workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
  
  “We salute and thank all healthcare workers, first responders and other essential personnel serving on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19,” a release said.

There's even a map at the link - and amusingly, the flyer says that you should observe the flyover from the "safety" of your quarantined home and under no circumstances should you attempt to find a decent vantage point to actually see the flyover.

Out of Reach

Both Groot and Fatass have stated that Chicago and Illinois will not reach Phase 5 of their plans without a vaccine:

• Illinois Gov J.B. Pritzker on Sunday morning said he’s not counting on the White House to help Illinois ramp up its coronavirus testing capabilities – and he vowed that Illinois won’t see an economic reopening until the state meets “all the standards” he’s set in his phased plan.
  
  Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, the Democratic governor said states continue to “go it alone” to ramp up testing. According to a Harvard University analysis, Illinois should reach 64,000 tests a day before stay-at-home regulations are further relaxed. Pritzker last week achieved a goal of receiving more than 20,000 tests results back in one day.
  
  [...] “If the Chicago Tribune thinks that everybody’s going to go back to completely normal without us having a very effective treatment or a vaccine, they’re dead wrong.”

We remember weeks ago when the entire plan was to "flatten the curve." That was accomplished.

We also remember when the "goal" was 20,000 tests a day. That was done and suddenly, it's 64,000? Triple plus 4,000?

Has anyone in the media written about the number of recoveries? It crossed over the 98% mark recently, and not a single politician is saying anything about the people who test positive for antibodies, meaning they had it and beat it already without any sort of treatment.

Now Fatass is digging the final grave for the entire restaurant industry:

• When Illinois restaurants were ordered shuttered by Gov. Pritzker in mid-March, restaurant owners, chefs and workers braced for several weeks of zero income.
  
  When the order was extended through April, and then May, the industry pointed to June.
  
  But Pritzker’s five-phase plan, announced Tuesday, set the earliest-possible day for reopening at June 26, and that date is by no means definite.
  
  For an industry already struggling to hang on, the news was devastating.

We read a statistic that said after the government, restaurants were the biggest employers in the State of Illinois, and they had exactly zero input into the "Phase Planning." That isn't politically intelligent at all.

Farcically Ridiculous

The Chicago Contrarian can turn a phrase when they want to:

• Let’s specify up front Brown’s goal to reduce Chicago’s homicide rate to under 300 is not only unrealistic, but farcically ridiculous. Moreover, it is a goal in which Chicago’s 63rd Superintendent of Police announced with cosmic optimism but without anything closely resembling a strategy to service the ambitious goal. The fact Brown did not offer a specific plan to reduce Chicago’s homicide rate is not too terribly surprising and should provoke Mayor Lightfoot to experience buyer’s remorse for Brown’s hire.
  
  To begin his tenure, Brown was forced to issue an apology to several North and Northwest Side aldermen for the Department employing a new tactic known as “the surge.” A maneuver with little compelling logic, under the “surge,” the Department targets high-crime neighborhoods with an excess of police vehicles. A remarkably short-sighted and parochial strategy to address the chronic unrest which grips the South and West Sides of the city, the defining feature of the “surge” is not a permanent increase to manpower or an innovative anti-crime strategy to flush out crime, but rather a fleeting moment in which the cacophony of roaring engines, flashing lights, and sirens symbolize a police presence.
  
  A Potempkin-esque show, although Mayor Lightfoot stated the “surge” had produced some “promising results,” Superintendent Brown’s new tactic drew the wrath of aldermen who represent North and Northwest Side wards which were stripped of police protection to carry out the “surge” in the Harrison, Gresham, Englewood, Austin, and Deering Districts. Brown apologized for his failure to inform aldermen their wards would temporarily face reductions in manpower to conduct the “surge” and pledged to “communicate” police plans more effectively. A meaningless gesture, Brown’s “surge” dovetailed with his vow to develop a replacement for “merit” promotions and his resolutely dodging questions over civilian oversight of the Department during his virtual confirmation hearing in front of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.

The Contrarian has also designated Brown "Superintendent Moon Shot" in reference to his unrealistic - or "farcically ridiculous" - goal of 300 murders, while Chicago races to hit 200 before 01 June. We haven't settled on a nickname yet, seeing as he's only been here two weeks and hasn't really had a good opportunity to earn a sobriquet. We were toying with the idea of Moonraker but we're still undecided.

A Cop and an Art Gallery

Remember how Groot and her sycophants were (and are still) painting cops as the problem in many neighborhoods? "Occupying forces." "Slave patrols." Pretty much mercenaries. We and others countered that cops are coaches, scout leaders, school councils, and volunteers across a wide range of positions - the glue that helps hold a neighborhood together.

Here's a cop doing it in one of the most downtrodden of areas:

• When Corry Williams was converting an old West Side church into an art gallery, he noticed a 9-year-old girl named A’mya peeking in the window every day. Now, five years later, A’mya’s artwork is a permanent fixture of his 345 Art Gallery.
  
  Williams says that’s what he wanted the gallery to do — bring people in the neighborhood together, especially children, which he aims to do through classes, community events, murals and field trips.
  
  Over the last five years, Williams has juggled the gallery at 345 N. Kedzie Ave. and collecting with his work as a police officer, which he’s been for more than 20 years. But once he walks inside the gallery, he says, he’s a regular guy, not a cop.

A lot of people make noise about "helping" the community and paying lip service to "creative outlets" to alleviate hope and despair.

Here's a cop actually doing it in a part of town that has been abandoned by the politicians for decades.

The kids in that neighborhood aren't going to remember Groot or the aldercreatures when they get older. They're going to remember this cop and the safe space he helped create for however long it lasts. Best of luck Officer Williams.

Where's Jabba?

This question popped up a couple of places:

• Where's Putzker and why did he cancel the daily Coronavirus briefing?

Heavy money is betting that he slipped off to Florida to visit the "non-essential traveling" family via a charter from a small, out-of-the-way airport. But "reporters" have been intimidated since Fatass snapped at them for daring to question his wife leaving the state in direct contradiction of all JB's orders.

Seven Cops Hurt

No kryptonite on scene? Because they were obviously trying to subdue Superman:

• Seven Chicago police officers were injured during a brawl with a man who refused to leave a South Loop business on Saturday morning.
  
  The situation took place shortly after 11 a.m. in the 1300 block of South Wabash Avenue. Officers responded to a call of a disturbance in the lobby of the business, where someone complained that the suspect, a man, would not leave when asked to. A fight broke out when the suspect began fighting with the officers, one of whom injured his shoulder and knee and had to be taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment.
  
  Six other officers had minor injuries and were treated on the scene, police said.

Get well soon Officers.

The "Plan"

A rumor at this point, but completely believable:

• Rumor has it that city considering doubling water, garbage, city sticker and neighborhood parking permit fees. This on top of much higher tax levy on all home values.
  
  They have been told that about 1/2 of the canceled conventions will not be booking in the city any longer. They have found better less costly facilities and much better weather. But no worries the city will make up the lost revenues by their new taxing policies. Budget cuts, head count cuts, furloughs or buyouts were never discussed at the round table.
  
  First shoe to fall about early July provided that things are beginning to open up by then. If not delayed to early Fall. No way you say, just wait these are Democrats with no conscience I am talking about. If rumors only 1/2 true it is still a disaster in the making.
  
  [Groot] wont be happy with her inner circle when she reads this.

Again, rumor. But we're know people in the convention industry and they are not confident that anything is going to be "normal" over the next three years minimum.

What a Week

Wild ass Wednesday this week:

• Nine people were shot, three of them fatally, Wednesday in Chicago, including a 19-year-old man who was killed in Marquette Park on the Southwest Side.

Thursday says, "Hold my beer:"

• Five people were killed and nine more were wounded Thursday in shootings across Chicago.

Two days, 8 dead and 15 wounded.

Per HeyJackass.com, May is already averaging two killings and eight wounded PER DAY (17 dead, 65 maimed). For the year, Chicago is already at 178 homicides, which means that to hit Brown's target over the remaining 237 days of 2020, Chicago has to average a homicide every two days.

At this rate, Brown is going to see 300 before the first day of summer. He's been on the job an entire week and already he's failing beyond all expectations.

Kass

We covered some of these questions weeks ago. In fact, any thinking person (a rarity in Illinois) has been asking these questions since March/April:

• Before Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker came out with his five-phase plan to reopen a state he shut down for the coronavirus pandemic — he forgot something. He forgot to seek input from the business that employs more workers than any other in the state: restaurants and bars.
  
  “We did not have any input until after the five-point plan was released,” Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia told me in an interview on Thursday. “We’re the largest private sector employer. And no input? Again, we believe that communication and education is the key to success. But our restaurant owners and bar owners are hurting.”
  
  Until Pritzker shut down the state’s restaurants and bars, they employed more than 500,000 Illinois workers. The only employers with more workers are the state and local governments. And he has yet to offer leadership for business owners who are obligated to pay state and local taxes, and who, through no fault of their own, are hemorrhaging money because he shut them down.
  
  Pritzker has granted himself immense state emergency powers. But he hasn’t demanded the Illinois General Assembly meet and act, and the state tax code is written largely by the legislature, though local governments set their own levies. Pritzker also hasn’t told homeowners what he’d do, if anything, about paying the property bills they’ll be getting in July, even if they’ve lost their jobs.

The people nominally in charge (Groot, Prickwrinkle and Fatass) have managed to cut their own throats - keeping spending levels at unsustainable levels, while completely turning off the money sources.

In fact, there doesn't seem to be any sort of consistency or communications among the top three morons. Witness the golf course debacle yesterday.

• Putzker allows golf courses to reopen statewide with extensive restrictions;
• Prickwrinkle follows suit, opening Cook County courses;
• Groot closes the three Park District courses, orders a privately owned course to close, then somehow gets Prickwrinkle to close the three Cook County courses within city limits.

So if you golf, Groot doesn't want your money. Suburbs do. Illinois does. Other states will gladly take it. But not Chicago.

As Kass points out (again, echoing numerous comments here):

• “What’s amazing is nearly 1 million Illinoisans have lost their jobs and yet their government has yet to cut any costs,” says Ted Dabrowski, the savvy budget and fiscal analyst at wirepoints.org. Pritzker and Lightfoot have made no announcements of any pay cuts, freezes, furloughs or layoffs that could reduce the cost of government, he said.
  
  “Libraries are shut. Park districts are shut. Schools are only partially operating. Many bureaucracies are closed down. And yet Illinoisans continue to pay for the full cost of government through the nation’s highest property taxes. “Illinoisans needed property tax relief before COVID-19. Now they are desperate,” Dabrowski said.

Stein's Law says "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Illinois is rapidly approaching that point.

Protests Not Allowed?

These commie assholes are going to get the NYPD hurt:

• New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea stated outright this week that people are not permitted to gather for protests in public due to the coronavirus pandemic.
  
  The city leaders pointed to the need to maintain social distancing in order to prevent greater spread of COVID-19, stating that this takes precedence over people's rights to exercise their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly.
  
  "You're talking about some of the values we hold in the highest regard in this country and certainly in this city, the right for people to gather, the right to free speech and the right to protest," Shea said during a Monday press briefing. "But now comes the bad news, we're in a pandemic and executive orders have been issued, these are laws that have been passed down through executive order to keep people alive, while we greatly, greatly respect the right of people to protest, there should not be protests taking place in the middle of a pandemic by gathering outside and putting people at risk."

This is exactly what the PBA president was afraid of, and rightly so. Every possible warning has been given. If the police are called, re-advise that everyone is better off far apart, then leave them to their own devices. You can't outlaw stupidity and you can't enforce a blatantly unconstitutional order of this magnitude.

No protests? This was deliberately written into the founding documents and will undoubtedly lead to the people defending these ideals....violently if necessary.

Sun Times Playing Catch-up Again

On 01 May, we told readers Dart had run out of Electronic Monitoring bracelets.

It wasn't our information. Readers had gleaned it from a Chicago Tonight show a day before.

Now the Sun Times is finally catching up, all in an effort to....release more inmates!

• The Cook County sheriff’s office has run out of electronic monitoring bracelets, worrying inmate advocates, who say the lack of devices could lead to too many arrestees languishing in jail during the coronavirus pandemic.
  
  The lack of bracelets, which was mentioned by prosecutors during court hearings Thursday, could grow worse as the weather warms, straining the sheriff’s office’s ability to socially distance detainees and leading to more contracting COVID-19 at Cook County Jail, advocates said.
  
  The sheriff’s office, meanwhile, acknowledged the lack of devices, saying its inventory of bracelets had been exhausted Tuesday night and supply issues with companies that provide the bracelets has prevented the office from acquiring more.

This has turned into a national joke, freeing criminals (who have demonstrated a complete inability to live by the rules of a civilized society) upon an unsuspecting populace to "prevent" the spread of a virus. Has anyone seen the shooting and killing numbers for May?

Catanzara Wins

Word from numerous quarters that the votes have been counted and Graham is out.

"May you live in interesting times."

Let's see where this goes now.

FOP Vote Counting Begins

From what we've heard, this is a hand count and will likely take all of today and could stretch into a second day, maybe even a third. Old-timers tell us that in previous years, it usually took forty-eight hours from start to finish. We don't know if that was one count or two, but with the automated counting of recent years, results were tabulated twice. That would be unwieldy with a hand-count.

We'll update as soon as we're able, depending on computer access and taking into account we don't post on-duty.

UPDATE: Here's some media coverage.

Convention Hit

That hole in the budget keeps getting bigger:

• Before Illinoisans were working from home, before restaurants had shut down and before the stay-at-home order was in place, the coronavirus pandemic was already ravaging the state’s convention business.
  
  Now it appears the industry that sustained the pandemic’s first economic blows might be one of the last to recover.
  
  Under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s five-phase plan to reopen the state, conventions cannot be held until the final phase of recovery. To reach that phase, a vaccine must be developed, a treatment option must be readily available or no new cases must arise over a sustained period.
  
  There’s no telling how long it might take to reach the fifth phase, and increases in cases or hospitalizations could hamper progress. As a result, organizations are unsure whether they should cancel events later this year that would bring tens of thousands of people to the Chicago area, staying in hotels, taking cabs and ride-share vehicles and using their expense accounts to dine in the best restaurants.

$923 million in immediate losses - hotel stays, food and entertainment.

Then there's the ripple effect through hospitality employees laid off, taxi rides not taken, ride-shares not shared, the list is damn near endless.

Groot is putting further restrictions in place, some even stricter that Fatass's:

• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the city can’t reopen without a decrease in the number of coronavirus cases, “which we have not seen yet at all.”
  
  Though the city has seen progress in reducing the number of COVID-19 cases, Lightfoot said, challenges remain.

Remember, the democrat Machine (Groot, Prickwrinkle, Foxxx, Evans, and Putzker) is releasing actual criminals - including rapists and murderers - so that they can jail social distance violators.

Reading the BS so You Don't Have To

You want to see some real "bark at the moon" insanity?

• To newly appointed Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown:
  
  You apologized last week to aldermen on Chicago’s North and Northwest sides for pulling officers from their communities and sending them to the West Side to enforce “dispersal orders.”
  
  The apology should have been to the West Side residents who witnessed the “surge” of officers chasing black folks through the streets, an image reminiscent of slave patrols in the 1700s.
  
  Your surge left a Black man face down in the street, having a seizure, due to being tased by an officer for not sheltering in place. There was no news of this incident. Yet every West Side resident I spoke to knows what happened.
  
  What you call “dispersal orders,” I call terrorism.

The reason there were no news reports of this is because it never happened. Do a search of TRR's during the time in question and there isn't a single one. Plus, the news doesn't usually waste time on simple Taser-ings. And again with the discredited trope about "slave patrols" when describing the police? How very 2010.

We wouldn't recommend reading the whole thing unless you really want to see what the fever-swamps of the left look like. Like this:

• But rather than providing solutions to the underlying issues omnipresent in Black communities, you and the current administration choose to use force. Force in the form of dispersal orders, executed by armed law enforcement, in the name of the public good. Forcing domestic violence survivors into homes with their abusers. Forcing recovering addicts into homes with active drug users. Forcing the homeless to hide. Forcing those with no income to shelter in place without access to food or water, all in the name of public good.

No mention of house parties? Cops being blamed for not giving fatherly advice to a wayward 26-year-old? The lies about sending domestic victims back into homes, residences without food or water, chasing down homeless? We count at least five outright lies in that one paragraph.

Anyone at all correcting this tripe? Nope.

FBI Corruption

Back on 26 April, we noted that the head of the FBI and now-proven Deep Stater and Sparklefarts plant Christopher Wray, had withheld exculpatory evidence in the General Flynn case. That's illegal.

Yesterday it all came crashing down and all charges were dropped by the DoJ. Not only that, but the lawyer in charge at the time of prosecuting this set-up, has been re-assigned from each and every case he was handling and will most likely be fired shortly.

Guess who's at the top of this chain?

• Newly released documents from the Department of Justice show President Obama informed former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates of a phone call between former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016. He did so in the Oval Office.
  
  "Yates first learned of the December 2016 calls between [LTG Michael] Flynn and [Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey] Kislyak on January 5, 2017, while in the Oval Office. Yates, along with then FBI-Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, were at the White House to brief members of the Obama Administration on the classified Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities in Recent U.S Elections. President Obama was joined by his National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and others from the National Security Council," the document states.

There ought to be a few of those people going to jail for extended stays before this is all said and done starting with Comey, Clapper and Brennan.

And the FBI administration needs to be burned to the ground and started over from scratch.

Fake News Again

Remember, this is the deadliest pandemic in the history of mankind and we must shut down the entire country, ruining countless millions of lives and tens of millions of jobs to stop it:

• James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas (PV), released a video which had been recorded at a drive-up coronavirus testing site located at the Cherry Medical Center in Grand Rapids, MI. A medical center insider worked with PV on the story.
  
  A member of the ‘CBS Good Morning’ crew saw only one or two cars in line at the site and according to the insider, pulled medical professionals from the center and asked them to get into their cars and pretend to be patients waiting to get tested. They wanted to make sure to show a long line of cars.
  
  O’Keefe, as always, made a video of the story. At times, he spoke to the “insider” and used a voice-changing device to maintain this man’s identity. O’Keefe told viewers, “Our insider witnessed the whole thing and came to Project Veritas, because he knew we would protect him. The insider told us that medical personnel were taken away from treating patients and making the line longer for actual patients wait for the COVID-19 test.”
  
  O’Keefe asked the insider: “You’re telling me you’re a hundred percent certain that CBS News, CBS News Corporation–national, staged a fake event. They faked the news. They faked the reality and broadcasted that to all of their audience last Friday on “CBS This Morning?””
  
  The insider replied, “A hundred percent. Absolutely.”

It's so bad See B.S. News has to create a backdrop of fake patients waiting to be tested to tell us how serious it is, thereby denying actual people from being tested for the deadliest disease ever.

Fatass Says What Now?

An interesting admission at Fatass's press conference yesterday:

• Per jb at his daily re-education briefing today, he is not the one making decisions regarding Illinois's economic shut down during the virus crisis. He said it's the doctors and epidemiologists making that decision. I didn't think that was how it was supposed to work.

It's not how any of this is supposed to work. The voters didn't elect bureaucrats to run Illinois - they elected politicians. And if the politicians are surrendering their power to un-elected bureaucrats, then we have a problem. A very big problem actually. Who is actually running the show if the elected have surrendered the decision-making powers granted to them by the consent of the governed?

We would opine that what exists at the moment is a quasi-legal state of anarchy - no one is at the wheel of a state careening out of control - and ripe for a charasmatic Strongman to take over. Anyone seen Blago lately? He might have a chance.

Shades of Arena (UPDATES)

Arena's hench-weasels are still out there, still looking to trickbag cops and firefighters for daring to question the progressive agenda. How do we know? They tell us via social media:

This is one of Arena's remoras - you know, that fish that attaches itself to a shark's ass?

Get your FOIA requests ready. Snitches in Missouri and New York have already had their names and addresses revealed. It's possible a smart lawyer could make this part of a pattern of targeted harassment based solely on your employment with the City and therefore monetary damages.

UPDATE: Supposedly, this is the goof who went around tearing down Garrido signs all over the northwest side and dumping them in Indian Head Woods? Ring Cameras and assorted home security systems caught her in the act, but Crimesha didn't prosecute?

UPDATE: She's taken her Twatter account private for some reason.

New SURGE Unit?

Rumor:

• Word just came down from a reliable source that the P.O.’s detailed to McCormick will get deployed to the south side districts and be part of the “Surge” anti-violence plan. I guess HQ personnel are now a Saturation Unit!!!

That's one way to clear out the dead weight.

Massive Tax Hikes Coming

Here's what the tax raises will look like:

• Nashville Mayor John Cooper is pushing a 31.7-percent increase in property taxes — the first tax hike since 2012 — as the city scrambles to balance its budget, according to The Tennessean.
  
  The plan increases property taxes by $1 for fiscal 2021, which would move the rate from $3.155 to $4.155.
  
  "This is a crisis budget," Cooper said at a city council meeting Tuesday, the newspaper reported. The mayor announced a $2.44 billion budget proposal, which is about $115 million more than the current fiscal year.
  
  Nashville is one of many cities in the U.S. that are struggling to make up tax revenue lost amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to widespread closures and record-high numbers of unemployment nation-wide. The pandemic comes as the state seeks to recover from a devastating tornado season.

And get how he's threatening taxpayers:

• “Thousands of residents have lost their jobs during the pandemic, and that makes the necessary decision to raise taxes all the more difficult,” Cooper said. “And as I mentioned during the State of Metro address, the city has thinned its cash reserves to a point where we find ourselves without a rainy-day fund during a stormy season.”
  
  Cooper said the tax hike is an effort to avoid laying off city employees. The city council has a history of voting down tax increases.
  
  “If any council members don’t want to approve this let us know and we will have to begin mass layoffs,” Cooper said.

So even while acknowledging thousands of people have lost their jobs (and won't be able to afford tax hikes), he's going to keep city employees working instead of laying some of them off, like every privately run business is doing. Just like a democrat.

Who Said This?

Overheard recently:

• "They get a uniform allowance. Let them buy their own equipment."

A "hot-mic" comment or a conversation overhead?

It demonstrates (again) the complete ignorance of how the uniform allowance came to be, what it's original purpose was and why we still don't have adequate equipment to fulfill the mission at hand.

1984 Comes to Life

The left is truly using Orwell's novel as a "How to..." guide:

Angry Dwarf is Watching.

Given, Not Earned

Why does every new carpetbagger think this lends them credibility?

• Since arriving from Dallas, newly appointed Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown has talked about shooting for the moon and holding the number of homicides under 300. Now, he plans to do all of that while wearing a CPD uniform.
  
  “As a law enforcement member with 33 years of experience, Superintendent Brown respects the uniform and all that it represents. He is eager to become sworn and wear the Chicago Police Department uniform as soon as possible,” Police Department spokesman Tom Ahern wrote Tuesday in an email response to questions from the Sun-Times. To wear the uniform, Brown must meet requirements for previously sworn officers established by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training Board, Ahern said.
  
  As a first step, CPD has requested a “conditional waiver of Illinois basic law enforcement training” for Brown as per the board’s so called “Out-of-State Trained Reciprocity Process,” Ahern said. “In the short term, the superintendent will also submit his application to the state, who will then evaluate what requirements he would have to complete in the way of online classes” through the police academy, Ahern wrote. “His prior training record from the Dallas PD will be part of the evaluation process in determining what additional requirements are needed. The process is expected to take approximately two months to complete.”

There's nothing the matter with being the guy in charge in a decent suit.

Wearing the white shirt uniform of the top guy should mean that at one point, you wore the blue shirt, and that isn't happening. You're being gifted something that you didn't earn....and yes, we know there are a ton of white shirts who never actually earned anything while in the blue shirt. But you can also tell the low regard that we hold them all in.

Later in the article, McCarthy praises this, but he was just another outsider playing dress-up in our uniform.

As Predicted

Totalitarians are pushing for open conflict:

• On Friday, Oregon Governor Kate Brown held a press conference to discuss the latest developments in the containment efforts of the Wuhan coronavirus, and how to implement safe reopening procedures for different parts of Oregon. She failed, however, to announce the specific framework of the reopening, and said she would extend the emergency declaration until July 6 — two days after Independence Day.

The entire state of Oregon has suffered only 109 COVID deaths.That's right near the bottom of any state in the union, so you'd think that the restrictions could be eased because they seem to have a handle on things.

Guess who's following suit?

• With the state’s “cabin fever” escalating and warmer weather looming, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday unveiled a five-part reopening plan — with the stern warning that life won’t go back to normal any time soon.
  
  [...]
  
  “I know that we all have a passionate desire to return to the sense of normalcy that we felt before the world knew of COVID-19. Here’s the truth. And I don’t like it any more than you do,” Pritzker said at his daily briefing. “Until we have a vaccine, or an effective treatment, or enough widespread immunity that new cases fail to materialize, the option of returning to normalcy doesn’t exist.”

We don't have vaccines for dozens of diseases, and we function just fine as a society. You aren't going to get 100% immunity, but nothing in life is 100% guaranteed (aside from Fatass's next meal it seems.)

And our rumor of a July opening for Illinois is looking more true by the minute.

What an Asshole

Evidently, the CPD left an illegitimate child somewhere and now he's throwing house parties that are hotbeds of disease:

• The Galewood townhome used to host a videotaped house party on April 25 was the scene of a smaller gathering March 26 that triggered neighbor complaints and a visit, but no citations, from police.
  
  Like the second gathering, Chicago Fire Department Cmdr. Christine Matthews said the earlier party, attended by 10 people, was hosted by her 26-year-old son [Janeal Wright], who doesn’t live with her, but has a key to her townhome “for emergencies.”
  
  [...] On Monday, Wright blamed Chicago Police officers for failing to deliver the tough-love message he needed to hear.
  
  “The police told us, ‘Get everyone out of the premises because it was loud.’ They didn’t tell us about, ‘Hey, you can’t do this here. You can’t have these many people in the house.’ They didn’t tell me that. They didn’t mention the pandemic. They just said it was loud, it got out of hand and my neighbors ended up calling,” Wright told the Sun-Times.

So shame on all of you police officers for failing to "deliver the tough-love message." Shame Shame Shame!

Just a question though - where was his father to deliver this message? We mean, we know Shrillary and the democrats think it "takes a village" and all that crap, but from our observations, all it really takes is two involved parents who care and who cooperate to raise a mature, responsible adult who is at least basically aware of how not to be an asshole.

In the meantime, fuck you Janeal. We're writing you out of our will for being such an embarrassing asshat.

NYPD Union Has Correct Idea

Get out of enforcing "social distancing" bullshit:

• The city’s largest police union is demanding cops get “out of the social distancing enforcement business,” while slamming city officials for “releasing criminals,” “discouraging proactive policing,” and leaving subways “in chaos.”
  
  “This situation is untenable: the NYPD needs to get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether,” a statement from Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch said.
  
  “The cowards who run this city have given us nothing but vague guidelines and mixed messages, leaving the cops on the street corners to fend for ourselves,” Lynch said. “Nobody has a right to interfere with a police action. But now that the inevitable backlash has arrived, they are once again throwing us under the bus.”
  
  Lynch added that the politicians are “still watering down our laws, releasing real criminals and discouraging proactive enforcement of fare evasion and quality of life issues.”

A commentator pointed this out a few days ago:

• Prikster says "Its up to the Police to enforce the RULES, it's as plain and simple as that"...
  
  What rules prikster?- No sir. The police enforce laws. Not rules

Putzker (and Groot) want to police to be the heavies so that can blame the police when everything goes south. It's already happening here and there. "Recommendations" and "suggestions" do not carry to weight of Law, which was kind of the point of us suggesting Gas Teams yesterday - if this was an actual emergency, then Gas Teams would be a legitimate tool to clear the streets, correct?

But it isn't.

Boston Chief Points Out the Obvious

We expect him to be dismissed shortly for saying what everyone knows:

• One man was killed and two others were injured in a triple shooting Sunday night in Roxbury amid an uptick in gun violence during the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said. Police responded to 52 Kensington Park shortly before 10:40 p.m. after hearing gunshots and receiving a report of a person shot, Boston Police Commissioner William Gross said during a late night press conference.
  
  [...]
  
  Gross thanked community members who called 911, which allowed police to respond to the shooting, arrive in “such a timely manner” and potentially save the other two victims’ lives, he said.
  
  He also rebuked the violence during the COVID-19 outbreak, arguing that violent offenders should not be released from prison regardless of the health risks posed by staying incarcerated.
  
  “People who have been locked up for violent offenses and carrying a firearm should not be released on personals, and I could care less if they get sick in jail or not,” Gross said. "They are a danger to the community, and they’re sending the wrong mentality.”

How come this guy didn't come here to run the CPD? Oh yeah, sorry, can't be pointing out the obvious.

IG Scandal Brewing?

Things that make you go, "Hmmmmm"

• To all the enterprising reporters out there got a tip for you.
  
  There is a juicy scandal brewing at Joe Ferguson office concerning an employee and identity theft. Some FOIA requests about a recently fired employee would make a nice start.
  
  Say it aint so JOE

This is assuming there is an actual investigative reporter left in Chicago. We aren't hopeful.

Speaking of Planning Ahead

Why doesn't the Department active the Gas Teams?

You want to clear a corner, a street, a park, nothing worked better than the old Gas Teams that would drive up, hose down a corner, and drive off to the next one. It cleared thousands off the street during the Bulls riots without any permanent aftereffects.

It would take some balls to give the order, and we're pretty sure balls are in short supply among the command staff these days.

There are a few who remember though. They have a week or two to test the equipment and train up a few squads before it really gets warm.

Planning Next Weekend

After five were killed and forty-four wounded, steps are being taken:

• not sure if it has been mentioned yet but cpic is making a daily call to the districts asking for intel about parties, 46 people shot in a weekend and you worry about a party

As far as we can tell, only five of the forty-four were at a party, so this seems like yet another misdirection play.

Contact Cards Anyone?

When the mayor, head of the executive branch of Chicago government, took it upon herself to confront naughty citizens playing in a schoolyard while being backed up by numerous police officials (including supernintendo Brown), that's a non-consensual police encounter, correct?

So how many ISR Reports were filled out by either Groot, her bodyguard detail or the high ranking police officials on scene? After all, if we don't fill one out, we are subject to all sorts of discipline and sanctions, up to and including termination.

Or is this yet another example of what absolute horseshit the Consent Decree is?

Good News!!!

Chicago didn't hit 300 homicides this weekend! Congratulations Supernintendo Brown!

The bad news is that Chicago racked up another five dead and thirty-nine wounded before dinner time Sunday....still six hours to go as of this writing.

And amazingly (or amusingly) after Groot held her disastrous presser in 011, Marquette went up for grabs, racking up nine shootings in a matter of six hours, including five at a house-party that Groot didn't shut down.

Final totals up in a few hours at the HeyJackass.com site.

UPDATE: five dead, forty-two maimed as of 2100 hours. Still three hours to go.

Groot's Snitch Line (UPDATE)

Remember when CPD was going to implement "snitich boxes" so concerned citizens could submit anonymous tips about crimes and murders via a paper note into a mailbox like device? We believe it was during McCompStat's tenure and the Department went so far as to buy some reinforced mailboxes, but never actually deployed them. We had a bet at the time that at least one would be stuffed full of excrement and another with lighter fluid and burned. We have since joked that they may have been repurposed as Weed Amnesty Boxes at the airports.

Groot has proposed modernizing the East German Ministerium für Staatsicherheit practice of recruiting something like 10% of the compliant busybodies to become informants for the new police state:

• Tips submitted through this service are encrypted, confidential and are immediately available to the public safety organization. In certain cases, depending on the organization, you may be eligible for a cash reward. After submitting your tip, you will be provided with a unique tip code that you can use to see updates on your tip and chat in real-time. 

De Blasio tried this in New York recently:

• Mayor de Blasio’s social distancing snitching program is sending cops out on thousands of dead-end calls.
  
  Most of the 17,745 reports made to the city’s 311 complaint repository as of April 24 about people within six feet of each other were fruitless pursuits for the NYPD, according to department data.
  
  The alleged offenders were usually gone, and police found no evidence of social distancing violations or opted not to take action on 9,378 of the calls, or 53 percent of the time.

Sounds like a great use of police resources as the summer killing season is upon us. Luckily, pranksters shut down the system in short order:

• Mayor Bill de Blasio was forced to temporarily close his coronavirus 'snitch hotline' over the weekend as the service was inundated with prank calls, pictures of genitalia and memes likening de Blasio to Adolf Hitler.
  
  De Blasio unveiled the controversial scheme on Saturday, urging New Yorkers to text 311 to report anyone violating the state's social distancing rules or stay-at-home orders. However, the response didn't quite go to plan as aggrieved members of the public vehemently criticized the 'tyrannical overreach' the hotline posed and within hours it was flooded messages of contempt for de Blasio instead.
  
  Such messages included photos of extended middle fingers and links to articles about de Blasio breaking his own social distancing instructions when he was seen going into a gym in mid-March, after the coronavirus outbreak had already started ravaging the city.

It sure would be a shame if Groot's efforts at a Police State were similarly thwarted.

UPDATE: Snitches revealed in the Show-Me State:

• Hundreds of people have been exposed for reporting people who have flouted social distancing rules and some are now scared they could receive a backlash.
  
  The names and addresses of approximately 900 people in Missouri were released as part of a media request under the Sunshine Law, which allows for the release of information submitted to a public agency (except for wrongdoing and abuse tips).
  
  St. Louis County had urged the community to share details of anyone not following guidelines in response to the coronavirus pandemic and noted in the terms and conditions that information may be shared publicly.
  
  However some people may not have read the small print submitted tips via an online form and email from the end of March.

Did anyone NOT see this coming a mile away?

Tenor of the Reporting

Everyone remembers just a few short years ago that the left was preaching "dissent and/or protest is the highest form of patriotism?" We heard a lot of that following the 9/11 wars, especially when the military went to Iraq. It was practically a staple of nightly reporting.

Then Sparklefarts won two terms and those protestors (TEA Party adherents, gun rights people, etc) were labeled unpatriotic, extremists and all manner of slander.

This carried over to the 2016 campaign in particularly brutal nasty with the antifa pussies attacking Republicans in the streets, all while acting very much like the Brownshirts of the 1930's...you know....fascistic.

Then Trump won and suddenly, protesting became patriotic again. Funny how that worked.

Now you have many people in blue states, with democrat totalitarian governors extending Constitutionally questionable practices.....and protesting is, once again, a naughty undertaking.

Keep an eye on this obvious manipulation being undertaken by the media-types.

Already Wasting More Money

Tax revenues are at all time lows, not just nationally, but at the state, county and municipal levels. But that isn't stopping Fatass from planning to spend more money that he doesn't have:

• Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker proposed a massive $80 million program Friday to hire “an army” of nearly 4,000 state workers to track anyone who came into contact with people who test positive for COVID-19.
  
  Modeled after a similar and likely smaller program employed in Massachusetts, the so-called contact tracing program is regarded as necessary to reopen parts of Illinois once the governor pulls back on his stay-at-home order, which began a 30-day extension on Friday.
  
  “In order to safely move back toward normalcy, Illinois, the United States, and frankly the whole world must contact trace on a never-before-seen scale,” Pritzker said during his daily COVID-19 briefing, which has taken place for 57 straight days.

Groot has the same idea - spend more money she doesn't have (from a couple days prior to Fatass):

• Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday she expects a “whole new class of jobs that didn’t exist before” to be created by the need to reassure people it’s safe to begin congregating in public again.
  
  From mandatory temperature checks to contact tracing, Lightfoot said Chicagoans who have lost jobs during the coronavirus pandemic could find new ones when the twice-extended stay-at-home order is finally lifted.
  
  “There are going to be a whole new class of jobs that didn’t exist before that are gonna be coming out of our thoughts about what recovery and opening up the city looks like,” the mayor said.
  

In other words, increase the size of government intrusion into everyone's life....and pocketbooks.

Contact tracing is useful when dealing with a disease that is killing people rapidly at high percentages (Ebola, hemorrhagic fevers, etc).

This coronavirus is something that everyone is going to catch at some point and (mostly) recover from. Isolating populations merely delays the inevitable herd-immunity that mitigates the effects on the population over time. Contact tracing is completely useless in this situation and is just a political ploy to increase government budgets.

"You Go Home"

Hilarious. Groot and the brass finish up their press conference in 011 yesterday afternoon after threatening everyone with arrests and jailing, then decide to walk over to a nearby school and tell the people there to go home.

In front of the press and exempts, the one kid tells Groot:

• "Y’all need to find a cure, you’re talking about go home. You go home."

And Groot turns tail and pulls a J-Fled "gotta run" moment.

This was your opportunity Groot. This was your moment! You bragged about breaking up an underage drinking party the other day, scaring everyone out of an alley, but there were no witnesses to that one. Plus it was a reasonably quiet neighborhood. This was Ground Zero right there, the epicenter of homicides and mayhem for all of Chicago. 

• You had your bodyguards right there (hi Marnie!)
• You had the press there to record your righteous zeal
• You were surrounded by your "merit" white shirts
• You had a huge dude from Streets there in yellow
• You had your handpicked superintendent from Dallas

No one laid hands on this kid? No one chased him out of sight? No one had a robot armed with a tear gas grenade or something?

But you're going to send the police in to "break up" house parties across the city and arrest everyone in sight?

This must be that "leading from behind" that Sparkelfarts perfected. You learned it well.

Venturing Into Uncharted Waters

Groot is angry, probably embarrassed a bit, but mostly angry:

• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was outraged on Saturday that people in Chicago are going to large parties during the stay-at-home order and the coronavirus pandemic.
  
  "We will arrest you and we will take you to jail. Don't make us treat you like a criminal. If you refuse to do what is necessary to save lives, we will take you to jail. Period. We're not playing games. We mean business," Lightfoot said.
  
  The mayor was responding to recent reports of a huge party in Galewood last weekend. She spoke at the corner of Springfield and Adams in the West Garfield Park neighborhood on Saturday, where she said that a party was being planned.
  
  "We will be towing cars. We will arrest the homeowners. We have given enough warning. If our message is not resonating, we have to take that next level of enforcement to make sure we save lives," said CPD Superintendent David Brown.
  
  Brown said there are six parties planned for Saturday night, and there were several parties dispersed on Friday night.

Jail....and then what? An I-bond from the District, a dismissal at Court, and a Civil Right attorney knocking at the door with a proposition for a lottery win.

Groot and her ilk have spent their lives cultivating disrespect for the Rule of Law in general and police specifically. Now they act surprised when residents don't want to follow a legally questionable "mandate." They're extra surprised when cops object to being thrown into a situation that endangers their physical and financial well-being after years of being painted as the bad guys.

Is there some Legal Bulletin from downtown that specifies how CPD can go onto private property to detain, cite and arrest for a "mandate" that hasn't passed any sort of legislative review? Bureaucrats aren't supposed to run government - elected officials are supposed to, but they've been MIA for two months now. The FOP ought to have legal reps out at every single one of these "house party" Districts to advise officers on the legal ramifications of some of these orders being issued.

The Dying Media?

We can only hope they're going under, but we've been hoping that for damn near a decade-plus now:

• As the bottle of Madeira smashed over the heel of the Chicago Tribune’s bowspirit in 1847, the christening of the newspaper inspired men to wave their hats and women to flutter their handkerchiefs amid a burst of enthusiastic cheering. Now a vessel drifting rudderless 173 years later, the Tribune’s next port of call may be ruination. However, to avoid suffering the embarrassment of filing Chapter 11 for the second time in a little over a decade, the daily is, again, weighing all its options, primarily cutting staff base pay, paring back on employees’ hours, or simply downsizing its staff and shifting the workload on its remaining workers according to media reports and social media postings from Tribune staff. A protection the newspaper sought in 2008 after it nearly crumbled under the weight of massive debt and declining advertisement revenue, though the Tribune did eventually emerge from the rubble and a new era was expected, the newspaper’s present burdens are fairly significant, and it is under different management.
  
  Eight years after it crawled out of bankruptcy, amid another precipitous drop in advertising revenue and subscribers in full retreat, Tribune Publishing, the owner of the Chicago Tribune, announced to what remains of its workforce it was permanently reducing base salary for those earning more than $67,000 annually. The first of two cost-cutting moves in April, Tribune Publishing management followed cuts to salary with another arrangement ten days later in which it announced a broad plan to briefly furlough employees earning between $40,000 and $67,000 per annum. In a memo to employees untangling its dilemma, Tribune Publishing quietly offered a bargain to its beleaguered staff: Tribune employees could exercise the option of accepting severance and leaving the newspaper. For the benefit of the unenlightened among us, we shall translate precisely what all this means: The Tribune is, once again, in the midst of a steep financial crisis and appears to be leveraging the COVID-19 pandemic to rid itself of unneeded or unwanted staff.

We grew up in a simpler time, when the Tribune was the voice of Midwest Republicanism, the epitome of a sensible-type of discourse after the tumultuous 60's. If the owners of the Tribune would like a list of potential people to dismiss, fire or render homeless, we shall gladly provide names. And in the interest of fairness, we'll even begin at the other end of the alphabet with "last name starting with Z."

The writer of this piece, Chicago Contrarian author Florian Sohnke leveled one barrel at Trib "reporter" Dan Hinkel for his outrageous coverage of the Bettie Jones/Quinonio LeGrier shooting, labeling Hinkel as "A stranger to the truth...."  If the shoe fits.....

But our ire and contempt for the Tribine goes much farther back, and we were gratified to see Sohnke fire the other barrel at resident commie, left-wing apologist and police slanderer Zorn. The linked article deals with Zorn's bullshit following the McDonald shooting, but our contempt for him as an alleged "reporter" goes much farther back, into the 1980's as an apologist for some of the most vicious gang bangers and murderers it was ever our displeasure to experience. We wouldn't miss him (or the Tribune) if either disappeared tomorrow.

SWAT Standoff

Waiting it out was the smart course of action:

• A five-hour long standoff with a distraught young man standing on the CTA train tracks brandishing a knife has ended with the man being taken into custody on Saturday night.
  
  The emegency [sic], which began shortly after 3 p.m., and ended just after 8 p.m., caused "major'' delays to Red Line service and snarled traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway as first responders worked to resolve the issue.

We saw a bunch of early footage with traffic rushing by the scene, blowing horns and flipping off either the responding cops or the individual. But it was all resolved peaceably and professionally, without loss of life as nearly every one of these situations is. Good job all around, though you'll probably never hear it from anyone except other cops.

UPDATE: Now being reported that he died of blood loss following a number of self inflected stab wounds.

Remember In November

This is who Putzker is releasing into the public:

• A former Elgin police officer who was serving a life sentence at Stateville Correctional Center for a double murder and rape 38 year ago was just given a medical furlough, possibly because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  
  Herschel Glenn was a police officer, but off duty, when he shot and killed a young Streamwood couple — James Wright and Lillian Final — at Lords Park in Elgin, and raped the woman, in May 1982.
  
  He was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

His office has refused media inquiries. It's too bad he isn't up for election this year, but Illinois should make democrats pay across the board.

Democrats have always and remain soft on crime.

THIS....IS....300!

Sorry, but we can't un-see this:

Good luck trying to bleach your brain.

Another Hole In JB's Orders

This one punched by the United States Constitution:

• On the same day a northwest Illinois church filed a federal lawsuit accusing Gov. J.B. Pritzker of religious discrimination, the governor’s office released a modified stay-at-home order that expressly allows Illinois residents to leave their homes “to engage in the free exercise of religion.”

The first half of the First Amendment states:

• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Of course, this moron is part of the cabal that thinks an actual Right mentioned in the Second Amendment doesn't mean what it explicitly says either.

Police Shooting

No hits:

• No one was hurt after police fired shots during an encounter with someone seen firing a gun Friday in Garfield Park on the West Side.
  
  About 1:11 p.m., officers saw someone fire shots at another person in the 3900 block of West Madison Street, Chicago police said. The suspect sped off, and police followed the vehicle to West Jackson Street and South Pulaski Road.
  
  During an encounter there, an officer fired his weapon, police said. No injuries were reported, and the suspect got away.

Shouldn't there have about fifty "surge" cars floating around that area? Or is that only during the hours of darkness?

Be careful - tomorrow is supposed to be over 70 degrees.

Sounds Familiar....Again

We've covered these points since day one:

• A surge strategy that shifts Chicago Police officers from low-crime districts to temporarily flood high-crime areas is a “recipe for disaster” that has left officers without backup and entire districts without supervision, the police union president said Friday.
  
  Fraternal Order of Police President Kevin Graham has filed a grievance challenging Supt. David Brown’s decision to yank officers out of North and Northwest Side districts and reassign them to districts on the South and West sides without regard to “reverse seniority.”
  
  But Graham said the new superintendent’s decision to “subvert the police contract” is not the only problem. So is the fact flooding the Englewood, Austin and Harrison districts with officers for at least two hours at a time is leaving huge swaths of the city without enough officers or supervision.
  
  “Why should the 17th [Albany Park] District have … no sergeants available when you have an extra five in the 11th [Harrison] District? I thought the entire point of having the city engage in a consent decree … was to have supervisors watching what officers are doing. Yet, they’re stripping the supervisors and the manpower in those districts,” Graham said.

Then there was the political back-and-forth:

• Graham also demanded hazard pay for officers; more frequent cleaning of police stations and vehicles; a testing station for officers at police headquarters; and mandatory testing for officers who have tested positive returning to work after two weeks in quarantine. He renewed his demand that police stations be closed to the public.
  
  The mayor’s office fired back with a written statement calling Graham “flat wrong” and outlining what has been done during the pandemic:
  
  • The city health department has distributed more than 14,000 PPE kits — including N95 masks, nitrile gloves, face shields and hand wipes — as well as 297,000 surgical masks, 474,000 gloves, 725 gallons of hand sanitizer and 41,000 hand sanitizer bottles to the police department.

Which, as anyone who works in a District knows, is "flat wrong" - to borrow a phrase. The City has dropped (and continues to drop) the ball on gear. The media won't go to actual districts and see what's issued because they're afraid Groot might pull their Press Passes and deny them the all-important "access" to the correct parties, fundraisers and leaks of info to publish. The "leaks" are mostly lies as even the most rudimentary investigative effort would reveal.

Big Surprise - Not

Proof that the coverup went way higher than D "one-N" W:

• Sixteen years after then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko threw a punch that cost David Koschman his life, newly released cellphone records reveal that one of the people Vanecko was with called the mayor’s brother just eight hours after the incident.
  
  Long hidden from public view by a court order, the phone bill obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times shows Bridget Higgins McCarthy called attorney Michael Daley around the time that two Chicago police detectives had come to the McCarthys’ house. The cops were looking for two men who ran away after the punch was thrown, leaving Koschman unconscious on Division Street around 3:15 a.m. on April 25, 2004.
  
  McCarthy’s husband Kevin, who’d initially been handcuffed at the scene, lied to the detectives, telling them he and his wife didn’t know the two guys who ran away. He didn’t tell them that he, his wife and those same two men all had been together at an engagement party for one of Michael Daley’s daughters earlier that night.
  
  The detectives asked to speak with McCarthy’s wife. But he told them she was unavailable, and the police left.
  
  About four hours later, the police investigation came to an abrupt halt, records show.

This sore will fester for years more yet.

Are You Shitting Us?

Did someone get into the liquor cabinet?

• Chicago Police Supt. David Brown has an historically high goal for 2020: Keeping Chicago’s annual murder total under 300 for the first time in more than 60 years.
  
  Brown posed the challenge to department brass earlier this week, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.
  
  Police records show the city hasn’t seen fewer than 300 murders in a single year since 1957. As of April 26, the department had opened 149 murder cases in 2020, a slight uptick from 2019, with the traditionally violent summer months just around the corner.

Chicago couldn't stay under 300 with all of the CAPS money Clinton threw at the cities.

Chicago couldn't stay under 300 during the hiring freezes of the early 2000's.

Chicago couldn't stay under 300 with over $100 million in OT the past few years.

Chicago certainly isn't going to stay under 300 with (A) a governor releasing violent predators left and right, (B) a States Attorney refusing to prosecute even the simplest of crimes along with actual gun offenders and (C) a Department demoralized and kicked around daily, under a Consent Decree and in the midst of yet another political administration that attacks them almost daily.

Chicago is already at 161 murders (per HeyJackass.com). One-third of the way through the year and well past the halfway point of Brown's fantasy number.

As long as we're wishing for the impossible, how about a Contract and a haircut?

Fatass Planning Longer Closure?

A rumor, but it's out there nonetheless:

• Two independent sources inside Governor Pritzker’s administration have confirmed that their boss plans to keep Illinois closed until after the July 4th weekend. Neither official would talk on record, but both echoed the same potentially bad news for Land of Lincoln residents. And they cited the governor’s risk-aversion for his paralysis in making moves to open Illinois for business.
  
  Last week, Jay Robert (aka Judgement: Bad) extended his Executive Order and related “rules” and other edicts through the end of May. However, the gov. has already faced one successful lawsuit blocking his unconstitutional restrictions. Additionally, a number of sheriffs and police chiefs have announced they have no intention of enforcing Pritzker’s economically disastrous orders.
  
  Behind the scenes and news conferences, Pritzker plans to keep Illinois closed through the end of the Independence Day weekend. Why?
  
  Because Chicago is the epicenter of Chinese flu cases in Illinois. And the governor remains utterly terrified that he will be blamed for any surge of infections and deaths that might follow a massive weekend of celebrations in the Windy City and in the collar counties, especially after a spring-time of people cooped up and eager to get out and socialize.
  
  Yeah, it’s easy for him to heap blame upon President Trump but Pritzker’s thin skin can’t take it. He’s basically paralyzed with fear. Fear that he will be blamed. Fear that he will look weak and ineffective.

He might also be paralyzed by the extra two-hundred pounds he's carrying around. That and Madigan hasn't told him what to do yet.

Areas Reopen

One of McCompStat's dumber ideas finally put to rest:

• Police detective areas on the West and Northwest sides have been reopened, high-profile moves by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to try to improve collaboration among detectives, patrol officers and residents in those parts of the city.
  
  The Harrison Area and Grand Central Area detective divisions had been closed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013 as part of a money-saving restructuring that left the city with three detective areas.
  
  By opening them again, Lightfoot said she expects to improve community policing because detectives will be closer to the communities they serve. The mayor announced in October that she planned to take this step. The detective offices are just now again operational, bringing the number of areas in which detectives work in the city back up to five.

Long overdue. The Districts covered are slightly different than before and the change isn't without some major hiccups in construction, staffing and equipment shortages, but those will shake out over time.

Free Face Mask

A concerned reader e-mails us:

• Hi SCC,
  
  My business partner, Edwin Genao, is a former NC police officer who started a manufacturing company making uniform accessories for other officers. In the wake of COVID-19, we have recently shifted our production to making cloth face masks and we are offering free donations to police officers. I'm trying to get the word out there, as there are many officers with either poor or non-existent face coverings.
  
  Firstly, if you need a face mask please let us know! You can reply to this email, or better yet fill out our free request form (click here).
  
  Secondly, would you mind sharing this on your blog with your readers? I suspect most are police officers so it should really help us get the word out. Here are the links:
  
  Fask Mask Initiative: https://shirtstayplus.com/pages/face-masks
  
  Donation Requests: https://shirtstayplus.com/pages/donation-requests
  
  Let me know if any questions. Thanks! And stay safe!
  
  Jon Payne
  Partner
  Shirt Stay Plus
  Uniform Accessories for Police, Military and First-Responders

Let us know how these masks work out.

Dart Ran Out of What Now?

Not pizza trimmings, please.

Oh God, the humanity!!!

• SCC,
  
  Dart ran out of EM devices (ankle monitors and the base stations to go with them) due to the huge number of releases going on right now.

Well thank goodness it wasn't anything important.

(media coverage here at WTTW)