From Knuckledragger:
I wandered into the gun shop on the public square in town yesterday afternoon about 1 PM to buy a brick of 22LR and when I went to pay for it with cash, Brett started laughing at me with, “I guess you’ve heard about that credit card bullshit too, huh?”
He told me his credit and debit card sales are down 90% lately and every single one of his sales so far that day were cash transactions.
I’m going to head over to our local merchant of death later to see if he says the same.
It’s been a while since I wrote about Chicago, and I have to admit that unlike the feeling of schadenfreude that come over me when I contemplate the ruins of once-fine cities like San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Portland and Boston, there is a slight twinge of sadness when I see the Second City also trembling on the edge of the abyss as its civic fabric unravels.
Reader Brad_In_IL however, despite being a near-denizen of same, has no such compunction, and shares this article by the great John Kass:
It is a woman’s scream, a real scream of fear that was randomly captured the other day on a Ring doorbell security camera as she was attacked, pulled to the ground, and robbed by thugs as she walked on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Chicago’s “mostly peaceful” and leafy Lakeview* neighborhood.
Within that scream of terror hides another, buried sound, part of what the writer Matt Rosenberg, senior editor at wirepoints.org, brilliantly calls “the great unraveling.”
It is the sigh of a once-great but thoroughly exhausted city, a Chicago bone-tired, spent by decades of political corruption, hammered by the brutal application of race card politics in a city of tribes, and in 2020 Lightfoot’s City Hall failed miserably to stop the riots and looting that grew out of the George Floyd protests, and then Lightfoot endorsed the Soros-backed State’s Attorney Kim Foxx for re-election.
It is a city drained by street gang violence and political indifference, where police have been weakened and demoralized, even as private security forces crop up, paid for by those with means who demand protection. In this, Chicago is like Rome.
*Lakeview, for those who may have forgotten, was where I used to live and it was beautiful, safe and home to about four dozen (non-chain) restaurants within three blocks’ walk from our apartment. I loved living there, and left only because of pressing family commitments.
You should read the whole of Kass’s brilliantly-written article, because it is depressingly similar to the horror shows of America’s other metropolises, and shares many of the governmental sins that are endemic to any place run by today’s Democrats.
I say “today’s Democrats” because no matter his faults, I absolutely cannot imagine that former Mayor Richard M. Daley would have tolerated today’s carnage — and his father, Richard J. Daley (of ’68 Democrat Convention fame) would have reacted even more violently.
Oh well… sic transit and all that.
From Insty, I see this little bit of villainy:
According to recent reports, the FBI has been conducting raids on Trump allies, executing search warrants on their homes, and issuing subpoenas to individuals as part of a pressure campaign.
But, now it looks like they’re not limiting themselves to Trump allies, but they’re even targeting Trump supporters who did nothing wrong.
Lisa Gallagher, a Trump voter in New Jersey, has come forward with the claim that the FBI visited her home the morning after Joe Biden’s fascistic speech at Independence Hall in which he declared Trump supporters to be enemies of our democracy.
Gallagher didn’t work in the Trump White House, nor was she present at the Capitol riot, yet she somehow ended up in the Biden administration’s crosshairs. She told her story to Tucker Carlson on Monday evening.
“I was terrified. I’ll be honest with you, when my daughter woke me up telling me there were three armed FBI officers at my door, I thought she was joking,” she told Carlson. “And I immediately tried to throw clothes on. I called my husband. I was crying. My knees were shaking. And even though I knew I had done nothing wrong, after seeing Joe Biden’s speech the night before I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is political.’ And I was frightened. I truly thought they can take me out of here in handcuffs.”
I almost wish they’d come to my door instead of some frightened woman. And you can take that how you wish.
Here’s a good one (“good” in the sense of fucking evil bastardy):
Madison Bratcher, the mother of a girl who was enrolled in the Bridgeport Independent School District (BISD), received an odd reaction from her daughter’s school after withdrawing her.
“Her daughter was bullied, exposed to inappropriate sexual talk by other students, and mistreated in classes and on the bus. Bratcher said she raised these issues with her daughter’s school, but they were not addressed,” according to a report from The Texan.
“All of these incidents show that Bridgeport doesn’t have the best interest of students at heart,” Bratcher told the news outlet.
Bratcher and her husband made the decision to homeschool McKinley, their daughter, who is in the sixth grade. They sent an email to the school notifying them that they were removing her from the school.
Which, according to Texas state law, is all you need to do if you want to homeschool your kid. The response from the school?
The parents did not receive a reply to their email. Later, Bratcher received a phone call from the school informing her that registration was now open. She told the individual that she would not be enrolling her daughter and would be homeschooling her instead. School officials called twice more even after being told that Bratcher was educating her daughter at home.
On the third phone call, an official told her that she needed to fill out some forms indicating her intent to withdraw her daughter. This person also asked probing questions about what program Bratcher would be using to educate McKinley. “At this point, Bratcher said she became very uncomfortable and asked the school to send her the forms via email.”
And as for the content of the “forms”:
The forms required her to acknowledge “dangers, concerns, and disadvantages” of homeschooling. One of the forms also said the district could investigate a family if it has “reasonable cause … to believe that the assurance” given that the child would pursue a bona fide program of homeschooling is not true.
All of which is total bullshit, of course — the “investigation” procedure does not exist, is not backed by any Texas law or regulation, and is pure intimidation.
This all happened at the school level, apparently, because when Our Intrepid Mom got hold of the school district brass, she got a groveling apology, and an assurance that the “forms” were not authorized by the district. (One hopes that this would result in someone getting fired for cause, but I wouldn’t put money on it.)
Why would the school stoop to this level? Ah… follow the money. Each student pulled from a state school means reduced state funding.
Texas residents, take note. Other states’ residents: find out the steps required by the state before you pull your kid.
Longtime Reader Tim V sends this appeal:
A buddy of mine is suspended without pay for refusing to get vaccinated and is currently in court over this issue. The Go Fund Me link has all the details. He is looking for financial help for the legal expenses.
I thought you might be interested in supporting this GoFundMe, https://gofund.me/511282ac.
Even a small donation could help Jonathan Lucas reach his fundraising goal.
Because this mandatory-vax bullshit has gone far enough, I’ve donated a small amount. Do thou the same, O My Readers, if possible.
Much of what ails us today is a refusal to learn from the lessons of the past. It’s called “presentism” (an actual word, not a manufactured one), and Edward Ring describes how it affects just about every aspect of our polity and society. An excerpt:
The climate emergency, along with the inequity of white privilege, are existential threats to humanity, and therefore both require a “reset” to put things right.
To make it almost impossible for Americans to unite and stop the destruction of their way of life, in case the sacred and urgent consensus regarding climate and equity isn’t enough, Americans are also trained to hate each other. And that trope, repeated endlessly and everywhere in myriad iterations, goes like this: If you are a member of the heteropatriarchy, you are an oppressor. If you’re not, you’re a victim.
Of course, the entire narrative must be questioned because it’s all a pack of lies.
Which it is. Read the whole thing; it’s excellent.