No, Vlad.We are not with you.

 The balls on that guy, Vladimir Putin. In his big deal speech today, he said American conservatives are on his side. He said as reported by the New York Times:

The nearly four-hour speech and question-and-answer session, with reference to “dozens of genders,” “gay parades’’ and “neoliberal elites,’’ relied on arguments used to animate the culture wars in the United States and Europe, an apparent effort to sway global public opinion in favor of Russia at a time when his army is losing ground in Ukraine.“

In the United States there’s a very strong part of the public who maintain traditional values, and they’re with us,” Mr. Putin said. “We know about this.” 

Give the Russian dictator his due for contributing to the deep divide in the United States. I anticipate that the left-leaning media will give this big play, arguing that cultural conservatives are on his side.

Nothing further from the truth. There's no alliance of freedom-loving Americans with the corrupt dictatorship that Putin heads. 

Oops, the name of Kathy Salvi, GOP challenger to Senator Tammy Duckworth, was left off the ballot.

 

Just a mistake, didn't mean to do it, no ill intent meant. 

Oh sure, you bet.

Thanks to the "mistake," Kathy Salvi's name on "hundreds" of ballots mailed out to voters in downstate  Illinois Schuyler County was replaced by Peggy Hubbard, whom Salvi beat in the Republican primary. 

Apparently the error was discovered after voters began returning completed ballots, prompting Schuyler County Clerk Mindy Garrett (who just happens to be a Democrat) to rule out any nasty stuff. Any votes without Salvi's name will be "set aside," yet still will be counted, she said.

Wait. What? Why aren't the ballots considered to be spoiled and discarded? I suppose that the logic is that no one meant to vote for Salvi, so the votes for Duckworth can't be discarded. And yet, any possible votes for Salvi have been cancelled. 

Salvi is demanding a better and more transparent  explanation from Garrett, which so far hasn't been made. As well she should. Illinois has a reputation as a corruption cesspool where one would expect every election to be legit. 

(Read the complete story here in the Chicago Tribune.)

Speaking of Salvi, she's being treated shamefully by state and nation Republican leadership. Turns out that party big wigs have decided that spending money to support Salvi would be wasted because, they must think, that Salvi is a sure loser in the deep blue state of Illinois.

(Read "Salvi stiffed by national and state Republican donors" in Illinois Review.)

Once more, the Illinois Republican party--if it can honestly be said that there is one--is worse than pathetic. Sure, Democrats dominate Illinois, but giving up on Salvi like this is disgraceful.

I know Salvi and she is exactly the kind of candidate party needs if it wants to no longer be comatose. She's smart, decent, independent and honest. She'd be vastly better than the go-along-to-get along Duckworth. 

Even if you think that Duckworth is a sure winner, voters must mark for Salvi to demonstrate that the party has quality candidates whom Republicans care enough about to support.

Here's a puzzle: Why haven't progressives demanded that J. Edgar Hoover's name be sandblasted off the FBI building in D.C.?

Today's FBI has become the mirror image of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's founder who politicized the agency as his personal police force.  

 

Progressives have demanded all kinds of removals--from statues of Washington and Lincoln on down--for every imagined offensive and deviation from moral precepts imposed by the woke. Yet, progressive have been mysteriously silent about why this honorarium to Hoover should remain.

The entrance to the FBI headquarters building in Washington D.C. is proudly displayed with the name of the agency's founder--J. Edgar Hoover. If there ever was someone who violated contemporary progressive rules in spades it was Hoover. 

Sure, he couldn't own slaves, but his secret activities assaulted some of those very laws that the FBI was supposed in enforce. You can get a taste of them here, in History.com. A summary (to list them all would be too longish.) would include his spying and keeping a dossier on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jk, Hoover believed King was a communist and a threat to national security, but more likely  was a threat to Hoover's rigid, right-wing beliefs. Hoover didn't keep King's dossier in his desk, but distributed to the media (to which I can personally attest). 

He compiled a long list of civil rights offenses and used the agency's investigators to blackmail officials  and others he didn't like. For example, he recorded details of President John F. Kennedy's extra-marital affairs.

His power was so complete that he died in office, without ever being subjected to the statuary 10-year-term limit. No one had the guts to confront this autocrat. 

So where are the progressives? If statues of Lincoln meet the woke's cancellation standards, surely Hoover should stand near the head of the line of the deserving to be rubbed out. Or maybe the Hoover-like corruption of the FBI mirrors the corruption and politicization that mars the agency today. Practices that fed the progressive agenda.

In Hoover-like practice, the FBI today is headed by political loyalists who have engineered campaigns to discredit the likes of Donald Trump and parents who want to exercise their right to raise their children as they wish. And a lot more. 

The latest example has been the trial of Igor Danchenko of lying to the FBI. He was acquitted, but durning the trial the FBI's politicization and corruption was on full display. 

Here's a taste of what was revealed as reported by the New York Post:

"Despite Danchenko’s acquittal, the trial produced a series of revelations about the FBI — including testimony from a bureau analyst that it had offered Christopher Steele, the former MI6 spy who compiled the dossier, $1 million in October 2016 to make its outrageous claims against Trump stick.

"Court documents filed by Durham last month also indicated the FBI employed Danchenko as a paid confidential source for more than three-and-a-half years — hiring him even as he was being investigated for his role in compiling the dossier. 

"In court testimony last week, Danchenko’s FBI handler revealed the Russian national was paid more than $200,000 for his source work — including up to $3,000 for conducting a single meeting. The handler, Kevin Helson, added that he had requested Danchenko receive a $346,000 farewell payment when the bureau dropped him as a source in October 2020. That request was denied."

Now, FBI whistleblowers are turning up to detail just how corrupt the agency as become

There is hardly any question that Democrats, Hilary Clinton's campaign and other partisans have corrupted the FBI, at least at the leadership level, to defeat Trump's 2020 election and when that failed to launch a years-long, false campaign to discredit the former president.

I have no interest in defending Trump, who should be occupying a loony bin. But the FBI campaign--now established as fact--to use against Democrats' political enemies is no less a corruption of a government agency that is as corrupt as it was under Hoover.

Could that be the explanation of why Hoover has escaped the attention of progressives? Do they want to do anything that would demonstrate to today's Americans just how politically corrupt the FBI can become?

I have no other explanation than the possibility that progressives are so ignorant of history that they don't know that history can repeat itself.

Independent women fleeing Democrats in historic numbers

In a nutshell:  In September, women favored Democrats by 14 points, according to a a New York Times/Siena College poll. Now, independent women favor Republicans by 18 points.

That's a humongous 32-point swing. In just one month.  Staggering. Unheard of. 

As a journalist, I have never seen a swing that large so quickly. I can't say in the history of political polling going back to the days of President Harry S Truman that such a rapid switch is unprecedented. But I can't find or remember it happening.  It is certainly momentous.

And in this, the New York Times, buried the lede of the story--no surprise there. The amazing swing was mentioned in a few paragraphs deep in the story. The story led with news that everyone already knew: That Republicans were gaining an edge, as most voters worry about the economy. Either the editors are stupid or are so blinded by their partisanship that they missed what a student in a freshman in a journalism class would have spotted.

Hardly any need to explain the implications of such a massive shift. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court scuttled Roe v. Wade, the 1972 decision that legalized abortion and, as is proper in a democratic country, will let the people decide what is legal, Democrats have been predicting a huge swing among independent women onto their side because if you're a women, you are pro-choice, no exceptions. Surely, the mid-term elections would be a referendum on abortion, Democratic strategists decreed. Abortion will become the biggest issue and allow their party to maintain its House majority and firmly control the Senate. 

Instead, the voters who identified abortion as the top issue amounted a mere five percent of those surveyed.

We'll see whose political strategy emerges victorious. But so far the signs aren't auspicious. The Times story noted: "But the poll showed that Republicans opened up a 10-percentage point lead among crucial independent voters, compared with a three-point edge for Democrats in September, as undecided voters moved toward Republicans." [Emphasis added.]

A side note: If you are college educated, you're more likely to vote for Democrats. Puzzling. You'd think that the better educated wouldn't so easily ignore the pressing issues--from inflation to crime and the open border. Maybe that's a commentary about the lousy job that higher education is doing.

I suspected there'd be a shift of independent women last year when I saw the organizing and the activism of suburban women who were outraged the Democrats in general had infected America with their pandemic school closures and the high-and-mighty attitude of school administrators, union leaders and the Biden admonition, an attitude that unbelievably denied the right of parents to raiser their kids as they think is best. 

More women who said they were Democrats were now voting for "the other guy. Think Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Democrats for the most part still don't see it. At least the party's progressive wing. How long will it take intelligent, moderate Democrats to rise up and take their party back? If there is a party left after the mid-term elections.

Chicago moves to suppress voters. Florida doesn't.

Parody

My blank mail-in ballot for the coming election arrived recently at my Florida home, but it's way too difficult to handle. My vote is being suppressed!

First of all, they expect me to walk to a mail box to send in my ballot to be counted. Good Lord! Why aren't they sending someone around to my house to pick it up?! 

Secondly, when I looked at the instructions for filling out the ballot they were clearly meant to suppress  the minority vote. Even though the ballot and instructions were in English and Spanish. What about Gaelic, my ancestors native tongue? This is offensive. This is not equity!

The complexity of the instructions is an arrow directed at people of color. I mean, you've got to put the completed ballot into a secrecy envelope that is inserted into the mailer. As if that's not complicated enough, you've got to remember to sign and date it. Far too complex for a person of color to understand.

Just requiring me to sign it is offensive. They're going to use my signature to see if it is identical to the  signature on my voter registration signature. What right does anyone have to question my honesyt? Just think of how many people, especially people of color, will forget to do it thereby invalidating my ballot.

The demand that my mailed-in ballot must be received before 7 p.m. on voting day surely is disenfranchisement. I demand that I have the right to vote when, where and how I vote. 

It's a threat to democracy.

Illinois governor debate scorecard: Bailey +1; Pritzker -3

 Most reports of the recent debate between Democrat incumbent Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Republican challenger, state Sen. Darren Bailey  focused on the their slinging back and forth charges that the other guy is lying

So, in the court of whose lying, it's a wash. Every politician prevaricates, fibs, embellishes, fabricates and equivocates so both  Pritzker and Bailey were essentially correct.

But on the issues, Bailey too often looked as if he was dodging and weaving. He could have scored more points if he had been better prepared and if he had more confidently, pointedly and clearly provided an answers.

For example, he knew he was going to be asked about the Democratic's biggest issue: abortion. He correctly said that restricting abortion in deep blue Illinois is practically and politically impossible. It came off as evasive. He should have attacked in detail the Democrats and Pritzker for enacting the most radical, extreme and permissive abortion law in the country. Under it, abortion is permitted without exceptions up to the moment of birth for any reason. Parents can legally be kept in the dark about their pre-teen or teenage daughter. 

That allowed Pritzker to blow hard about how he is protecting a woman's "right to choose." If only one of the moderators had asked him at what stage of pregnancy should abortion be restricted. 15 weeks? Viability?  Never? If the moderators had followed up, he would have had to say never.

But Pritzker is much more funderable on the issues that more voters care about. His claims about his "balanced" budget can be discarded on their face: He "balanced" the budget thanks to the federal one-time Covid-19 pandemic aid. It was so generous that Pritzker used it to fund teachers' and other government workers's pensions--something that the law doesn't permit. 

More to the point, the federal aid is a one-time payment. So, what happens next year when the munificent federal aid is not available. I guess he'll have to perform another slight of hand to balance next year's budget when the aid disappears. (I would have asked him if he became president would he continue to hand such larges to the states.)

Another major issue is the governor's overly wrought pandemic response. Lockdowns, classrooms shut down, restaurants and small businesses closed. He literally killed jobs. Would someone please tell him that he wasn't "following the science?" The comprehensive science that includes not just the sometimes wrong advice (actually, demands) of the likes of Tony Fauci but he ignored the science about how children have suffered emotionally, educationally and more from being subject "remote learning." Or how could you expect an economy not to suffer from shutting down the...economy.

Pritzker can be criticized on numerous fronts (see my new book, The governor you don't know, for the details). But my strongest criticism is reserved for the "journalists" who questioned the candidates. They made the mistake that so many reporters do these days: Not listening. There were multiple opportunities for follow-up questions that would have dug deeper into the candidates' answers. But, no. For the moderators, this was their moment. To show off. They had their prepared questions and come hell or high water, they would ask them. So, the debate wandered here and there, directionless and less useful than could be. Leaving more questions unanswered than answered.

So, who lost the debate? The viewers.

I'm interviewed by Jeanne Ives on her podcast, "The Real Story"

 

Jeanne Ives ran as a true conservative again Bruce Rauner and narrowly beat the incumbent governor. She's still active as one of the genuine voices of conservatism in Illinois.

We talked about Illinois politics, the captured media and lots more. We also discussed my book, "The Governor You Don't Know."  You can get a PDF or an audio version here: https://youtu.be/RFdUPxnTHbg  It's free. 

My new book: "The governor you don't know: What every Illinoisan should know."

 Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker represents just about everything that nudged me out of the liberal Democrat fold. I was a John F. Kennedy Democrat and I voted for every Democratic presidential candidate from Lyndon B. Johnson through Michael Dukakis. That includes George McGovern, who then was as far left as the Democrat Party would go (but not Americans as he lost every state except one).

But I realized that there was a growing difference between the party and me. It was a rift that turned into a yawning gap. It wasn't so much that I had changed, but that the party was moving away from me until I was utterly abandoned.

Here's an example of how it happened. When the HIV/AIDS epidemic broke out in the mid-1980s, the widely accepted public health measure to combat the disease was contact tracing. I wrote a Sun-Times column supporting the science, but not only did liberals disagree, they accused me of being homophobic. 

Why? The liberal agenda abruptly changed, so far to the left that it denied the science. You couldn't contract trace because it would be "embarrassing." It would needlessly exposed men who hadn't come out of the closet to discrimination. It would discourage gay men from getting tested. Laws were passed by pseudo-liberals to "protect' the identity of gay men. In Illinois, the long-established rule that required a blood test before marriage was abolished. And if you can believe this: One reason to end the required blood tests because "too many" people were getting married outside of Illinois to avoid getting the test. (Just think of the business the state was losing!)

Meanwhile, the disease spread to others: women and their newborns. Seriously ill patients who were infected from infected donated blood. So many of those who died from what was considered to be a death sentence. Effective treatments were eventually developed, but even without them, liberals and Democrats early on believed that it was better that people would die instead of properly following the science.

The liberal/progressive/Democrat left ironically have raised the anti-science banner against anyone who disagreed, even on legitimate scientific grounds, with the favored "remedies" to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. In truth, liberals/progressives/Democrats were the first to so crassly exploit science to run things. Trouble is, hardly anyone remembers. 

So, read my book to understand my loathing of Pritzker and the progressive agenda and why they have betrayed my liberal values.

The book is free. If you haven't received one in the mail, you can find it at pritzkerbook.com where you can download a PDF or audio version. Thank you for reading.