I was under the impression the use of "bunny" for something easy came from skiing. Doesn't everyone start on the bunny hill? I was not aware it could have come from somewhere else.
Johnson suggesting a property tax increase is a big surprise to me. He liked to talk about having courage to get things done, but all I saw him push for were things that his core supporters wanted, which is not courageous at all. Regarding putting more money in schools, on borrowed money means the next mayor would have to do the hard part and come up with money to pay for it, not Johnson. I disagree with Johnson on a number of things, and think his refusal to give straight answers is cowardly, but if he is willing to do the actual courageous part and raise taxes to pay for his programs, then I respect that.
But how is he going to balance the budget the following year without another tax increase? Without structural change to the bloated Chicago workforce or pension reform, the tax increases only serve to drive away residents and businesses, further shrinking the tax base and requiring more and more property tax increases from those that remain.
No property tax hike promises are just wrong. Does the price of a gallon of diesel fuel in a fire engine not go up? How about city workers health insurance, parts for truck repairs, concrete for sidewalk restoration? A better pledge is to keep taxes in line with inflation.
Trump's policy program: Deport 11 million + people to destroy many vital industries and damage others. Impose across the board tariffs on imported goods to impose massive sales tax increases on almost all consumers and destroy many businesses dependent on imports. Take health care away from millions of Americans; jail journalists and political opponents. Abandon Ukraine. That's it--not a single positive policy.
His supporters say he tells it like it is. So did Hitler.
I'm a retired CPD sergeant. The mayor cannot "hire" detectives like he can hire truck drivers or laborers. Police officers, after a certain amount of time on the job, take a detectives exam following which a results based list is made and posted. Officers are then promoted to that rank, go to training and are assigned to the detective division. Keep in mind that every officer promoted to detective means one less patrol officer to answer calls. And if the hiring of new officers doesn't keep pace, the overall number of officers will shrink. Johnson's promise to hire 200 detectives was BS and because voters weren't up to speed on the process they bought his nonsense through no fault of their own. Johnson is a bloviating huckster and the city will be better off when he's ousted.
I was a fan of Lori Lightfoot. While she had somewhat of an abrasive manner, I felt she was smart and capable. Mayor of Chicago is an almost impossible job.
I agree with you that Mayor of Chicago is an impossible job. I'd like to see Eric poll his readers with the question: "If you didn't have to run a campaign, would you take the job as Chicago Mayor?" (I take out campaigning because I think trying to raise money and the job of campaigning puts most people off of elected office.) Everyone loves to rip apart every Mayor and criticize every decision, but I'd be shocked if 1% would take the job.
I'd take it, just so I could get rid of the awful unused bike lanes, all of the unnecessary streetscaping, make sure that street sweeping went until December & fire all the incompetents that don't do any actual work, but are hacks with patronage jobs & huge pensions!
I'd also let them all strike & hire permanent replacements who get Social Security & no pensions!
Love the PS today.with the addition of the quotables reminding us of the dangers of Trump. Unfortunately, anyone I would like to send them to either live in Illinois, California or "6 months and a day" in Florida. Only swing states matter any more in presidential elections. Sad!!
Voted on Saturday. Not for Trump. But you know I have to go after your Covid Trump stats if you want to be "fair and accurate", so I did "the math". 424,324 deaths under Trump/Pence administration (1,267/million or .1267% of Americans). 795,163 deaths under Biden/Harris administration (.2375%). Now I realize the Biden/Harris administration has been through 3+ years of Covid while Trump had barely a year, but Biden had a vaccine when he took office and there were more deaths in 2021 than in 2020. The CDC has said that the death count in the US has been so high during the Biden/Harris administration because citizens have become more reckless in their behavior towards Covid.
You can look at the difference of .1267% (Trump/Pence) and .2375% (Biden/Harris) two ways. It can be a difference of .1108% (Slightly over 1 person per 1,000, my preference.) or as an increase of 87%. (Your preference.)
This is just one reason why if I were a Dem candidate I would NOT try to use Covid against the Trump admin in this election. Anyone who lived through and survived the pandemic now has very baked-in beliefs about what went down, and though I certainly think that Trump badly (and possibly criminally) mishandled the pandemic, many Trumpers and non-Trumpers alike feel their freedoms were needlessly compromised by general government overreach, and today that means the Biden admin.
It's called the power of disinformation. Trump supporters would have us believe that any restrictions were illegal. But who has the right to go out in public and make me sick,? I had Covid twice. I'm a heart patient and a diabetic. Yes, I know I can choose to wear a mask and get shots. But why should I need to worry about going out in public and catching it from someone that refuses reasonable restrictions? My activities don't stop them from doing their things. Why they should they be allowed to endanger mine?
I have family members who still refuse to get vaccinated because Trump told them it was bad. The reckless behavior in the years since Biden took over is a direct result of Trump encouraging it.
Yes, the pandemic wouldn't have snowballed into a massive death toll if precautions and proper advice had been taken seriously to begin with. Trump deliberately forced the political message to ignore it while ridiculing initial efforts by the CDC and other health organizations to effect the response needed.
After vaccines became available, covid deaths in Pro-Trump counties have been substantially higher than Pro-Biden . If Trump were to lose by a tiny percentage of swing state voters, it would be interesting to see of any of those votes would have made a difference. Highly unlikely scenario, but in this race, who knows.
When did Trump tell anyone that getting vaccinated was “bad”? He encouraged it. I think that there is some Chinese whispering taking effect here. If your family members never got vaccinated, it sure as hell isn’t because of anything Trump told them (If Trump told them to jump off a cliff, would they do so?).
I will amend my comment by saying he didn't specifically demonize the COVID vaccines. He merely spread anti-vax conspiracies long before COVID came along, and pushed modern-day snake oil remedies before the vaccines became available. His followers were already primed to reject vaccines in general, so yes, in a way he did tell them the vaccine was bad.
I don't know if they would jump off a cliff today, but who knows?
Actually, no, in no way did he tell them that the vaccines were bad. He announced to the world that he had been vaccinated and boosted, encouraged everyone else to follow suit, and praised the vaccines as “one of the great achievements in human history”.
As I have said many times, there is never any dearth of things that Trump actually says and does that shock, appall, disgust and outrage. Accusing him of things that are patently, verifiably false seems a pointless exercise to me.
And now he says he will put anti-vax lunatic Robert Kennedy Jr in charge of all medical policy of the country if he wins.
Junior says all vaccines are bad, so that must include the smallpox one he got as an infant, that wiped out smallpox forever on the planet & the polio vaccine he got as a child, that eliminated it in America & most of the world!
Calling him a lunatic is about as mild as I can go, he's extremely dangerous to the actual health of American society as a whole.
Millions will die if Junior is in charge of health policy!
Trump mishandled the the COVID crisis and was the cause of unnecessary deaths because of his incompetence and vanity (he thought he knew more than medical experts). President Biden inheried a financial and health crisis in 2021 and his administration strove to alleviate both crises, taking the advice of experts in both fields. Fiddling around with the figures and presenting Trump and President Biden as if they are equally at fault is bothsidesism at its worst.
Trump rejected the idea of wearing a mask because he was afraid he'd look silly with his face makeup coming off/smearing when he removed it. His personal vanity drove this one simple act that could have helped reduce spread. Even though Project Warp Speed delivered vaccines in record time under his administration, he helped the anti-science sing of his party convince Rs to reject vaccines (in addition to dampening mask wearing). The most interesting stat I find about COVID deaths is the divergence of the number of deaths in Red counties (where vaccine rates were lower) and Blue counties (where vaccine rates were higher). Trump's use of his bully pulpit (i.e., his personal "virtue" signaling) helped drive COVID death rates higher.
Where do all of you get this “Trump encouraged rejection of vaccines” crap from? Google “Trump Covid vaccination”. He got vaccinated himself, proclaimed it to the world, and encouraged everyone else to do so. He also referred to their development as “one of the great achievements in human history”. How are those words anything other than a ringing endorsement?
It's not *a* group. It's a nonpartisan site that aggregates evaluation information from 14 bar associations in the region. And if it wanted "every judge retained," it wouldn't make it crystal clear about all the candidates who received "Not qualified/Not recommended" ratings.
The bar association recommendations are a pathetic joke. They just want the truly rotten & obviously corrupt judges gone, but never go after the other 99% of the mediocre & incompetent clowns that Madigan inflicted on us. Illinois has no standards to be a judge, other than to be a lawyer that passed the bar exam. So a lawyer in years past, paid off Madigan with campaign contributions & maybe even legally added a Irish sounding name to their own & voila, they get elected.
If we can fire all of them at one election, maybe the Springfield Bribetakers, AKA the Legislature will get the message & create legal standards for lawyers to pass before they can even be considered for a judgeship!
There is some truth to what you say. But you are being overly negative and cynical. Trust me on this. I consider myself negative and cynical about many things involving Illinois politics. I grew up on the south side and personally witnessed much of it in my own family. But I believe there are judges that do good jobs.
I strongly encourage you to reconsider that approach. Having good, fair, and qualified judges is extremely important and it is so incredibly EASY to vote an INFORMED ballot for judges in Cook County! I'm woefully disappointed more people don't do it since we have a great resource here that very few places do.
Here is the VERY SIMPLE APPROACH that I recommend to all my friends.
1. Go to Ballotopedia.org, put in your address and get your sample ballot so you know what judges will be on your ballot.
2. Visit VoteForJudges.org (https://www.VoteForJudges.org/) for plenty of information on the judges on your ballot. Bar Associations have committees of lawyers who do the work of evaluating judicial candidates based on their answers to questionnaires, interviews, and lawyers' personal courtroom experience with judges. You can pick one of the larger Bar Associations or look at an Alliance of 13 Bar Associations.
3. If you don't want to read details, the site makes it SUPER EASY to see clearly who is rated as Not Qualified/Not Recommended. There are obvious patterns where a few judges are rated poorly by several (or all) Associations. Just search for a judge candidate's name to see how those with legal and courtroom experience evaluate them, and if they get bad ratings, then vote no only for those.
Don't vote "no" on all; but definitely do vote "no" on those who are listed as not qualified.
Here's how my friend Annie Logue shared it on her Facebook page:
"My fellow Cook Countians, we will be voting on the retention of a whole slew of judges. Do yourself a favor and go to https://www.voteforjudges.org/, then make a list of those judges who are not recommended by various bar associations, and make sure you vote no on those people. (K. Flanagan, Gray, O'Malley, Wright, Varga, Marino, Perez, if you don't even want to click through.)
If you are being sued, if your kid has been charged with a crime, if your best friend is getting divorced, do you want that case heard by a judge who was Not Recommended by most bar associations? No, you do not. You can take notes into the voting booth, so take them in!"
Really funny of the vile, insane teachers union demanding limits on campaign contributions, since I get at least two giant bed sheet sized postcards a day from them either attacking one candidate in the district school board race or promoting their stooge in that same race!
What's interesting is that I don't know what the GOP objections are or what they plan in its place. Is because of the requirement that everyone have insurance? Does anyone remember why we have Obamacare? Medical facilities, particularly in rural areas due to treating the poor for free. The Hippocratic Oath says they need to do it. Poor people were going without routine care. Then they were becoming seriously ill and requiring emergency care when routine maintenance would have fixed things. Yes I realize many people, never sick a day in their lives, chafed at being forced into having insurance. It's a stupid risk, no matter what one's political persuasion, considering the costs of even a minor illness or procedure. Imagine a $200,000 heart surgery without insurance which can happen to anyone at any age. Guess who would be first in line to demand that someone else pay for it. Before Obamacare, I had a $10,000 medical bill- without insurance. It took me awhile to get out from under that. Is it because a Democrat came up with the idea? I have even seen online comments from some saying that not everyone is entitled to medical care. Ah, Marie Antoinette medicine- let them get sick and die! You know when talking about the so-called "progressive agenda", we often have government regulations and programs because we can't trust all Americans to be nice to others or not cheat them. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need government laws and programs. Does anyone around here see anything that looks like an ideal world?
As a non-Trump Republican, I wince when less than half-truths are brought up to challenge him. It hurts the cause. Politifact rated the "drink bleach" comment as mostly false. USA ranking on the WHO list of countries by obesity rate is #13 (43% adults with BMI over 30). Canada is at #76 with a 27% rate. Obesity was a major drive or Covid-19 deaths. I'm not enough of a statistician to track Covid deaths and obesity rates world-wide but there is likely a high correlation.
I heard him asking questions which appear to be a part of a discussion he was having with scientists. Did you hear him suggesting to the public that they inject disinfectant? Those are very different things.
He suggested injecting disinfectant. That is an insane suggestion that he made on national TV. It doesn't matter that he was suggesting the health officials look into because, again, it was an insane idea that the President of the United States of America shouldn't have even hinted at.
With all the political stuff going on, I think it is time to identify all the political consultants and experts who help run campaigns.
For example, who is the political genius that tells candidates to send oversized postcards and communications out to folks? I guess the idea is we will read this first? Me, I throw them all away unread. Do not clog my mailbox please. And I suspect the oversized stuff costs the campaign more money. Who are these geniuses?
Also, I would like to identify and thank the person who hired Tony Hinchcliffe for Trump’s New York rally. You spent good money helping Harris, big thanks! And he was not even funny…heck even the Trumpers were not laughing.
I find it interesting that Trump can use words like garbage, scum, and the enemy when referring to various others and nobody blinks an eye, not even the press. Yet this jerk at his hatefest speaks the same words and everyone is suddenly horrified.
I offer this from British mystery novelist Josephine Tey, writing in "The Singing Sands" (1936):
When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in mirrors and buys things to deck itself out in.
But that is merely personal conceit.
Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable.
You can never convince Vanity that anyone else is of the slightest importance; he just doesn't understand what you are talking about.
I am regularly baffled by government arithmetic and journalist lack of math skills or skepticism. The Tribune article today said that the current City of Chicago property tax levy is $1.77 billion. The new levy, with the $300 million increase, will be $2.07 billion. That is a 16.9% tax increase. I have no idea how that comes to 4% for homeowners. But the fact is that homeowners, renters (vis property owners), small businesses, and larger commercial entitles will collectively pay it. This increase is permanent, and likely to continue to increase annually, as the city and CPS continue to find new ways to spend money and do nothing to reduce spending.
Possibly. It is all very opaque. Commercial property is assessed at 25% of market value and houses are 10%. I know condos are different. I know that commercial property assessments depend on a lot of usage estimates. I don't know of any city or county report that makes values or collections clear.
So who gets hit more on residential - homeowners, condo owners, or renters? On business what is the breakdown of retail, office, production, warehousing, etc. ?
I'm disappointed, Mark. You're usually one of my photos in explaining things. But no matter how you slice it, Johnson made promises on which he is now backtracking. I suspect JBs telling him it wasn't going to come from Springfield didn't help. Richard M. Daley often went to Springfield and they gave it up without a whimper. Johnson can't even get things out of what used to be called a rubber stamp. Thank God!
I am a great admirer of President Obama, but no, his insinuations about Trump’s culpability in Covid deaths should not have been played up by the Harris campaign, for the simple fact that they are so misleading, misinformative, and easy to refute.
The continued contention that the U.S.’s high death rate from Covid was attributable to lax protocols is absurd. Does no one recall businesses and schools being closed for months? Mask and social distancing mandates being in place everywhere? Not being able to visit loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes? Not being able to get appointments with doctors? Not being able to go to church? If not, what planet were you inhabiting four and a half years ago?
To understand why the per capita death rate from Covid in the U.S. was so high, one merely need take into account an established epidemiological fact that, while beyond dispute, has been mysteriously underreported: Covid may have been an equal opportunity infector, but the only people that were ever really at grave risk of dying from it were elderly people and obese people. 78% of Covid deaths were from people that were obese. The U.S. has one of the highest obesity rates in the world (its rate of morbid obesity is double that of Canada’s), and is particularly prevalent among people of color. That is why the American death rate was so high, and the rate among blacks was even higher.
It is not clear why the media were as aggressive as they were in suppressing this rather important data point (one suspects a sensitivity to potential accusations of “fat shaming”), but it’s abundantly clear how its omission has allowed misinformation of the sort that President Obama waded into in that speech to perpetuate.
There is no shortage of awful things to be said about Trump. It is neither necessary, nor helpful, to make stuff up.
I would say 100% of COVID deaths were due to people contracting the virus that causes it. In that regard, Trump downplayed and even aggressively undermined the advice of health professionals. Yes, we had lockdowns and work-from-home, but we also had a large swath of people determined to ignore any and all safety measures, even resorting to violence when called out on their behavior. People at risk died because selfish narcissists following Trump's lead helped spread a deadly disease.
Not to mention, in 2018 Trump dismissed the pandemic response team that Obama had put together that would have sounded the alarm and provided much needed early guidance
You know, you’re right. If it just hadn’t been for Trump and his malign meddling, then the transmission rate and death rate would have been zero. Just like every other country on Earth.
Sarcasm aside, if you look at South Korea's response it seems pretty clear that their quick reaction and public support led to a lower transmission rate and therefore fewer deaths per capita. They had around 12,000 deaths compared to 1M in the US.
Rather than continue to butt heads with you on this, I will simply concede that Americans' unhealthy lifestyles led to more people dying than might otherwise, but that what I said is also true -- South Korea, a country a quarter the size but with 20% more people than California, managed to only see 18% of its population reported getting COVID, while the US saw 24% reported (which was no doubt lower than the actual number).
In other words, a country with a much higher population density than us managed to keep more of its people from getting the virus in the first place. (Which, by the way, also led to them returning to normal much sooner than we did.) Make of that what you will.
And yet I don’t know one person who hasn’t “contracted the virus”. Probably 90% of Americans have had it at least once. Thank goodness the Biden administration rescinded those lockdowns and safety measures and we could get on with our lives.
I agree with most of the time. It would be nice if we could trust everything coming out of the mouths of leaders. But Trump wasn't a medical expert. Too many people ignored medical and public health experts to listen to him. Who is to blame for that?
Your last sentence is the key one. You can have a constructive debate about whether a different President would have been able to implement (and develop public support for) “better” policies. But, even if I were to conclude that Trump did an exemplary job on Covid, he is still staggeringly unsuited to be President for so many other reasons.
And I certainly don’t think he did an exemplary job on Covid, but blaming him for the death toll is just foolish. Like blaming Biden for the invasion of Ukraine.
Good points! Remember that Trump didn't mandate a lot of behavior. People did that to themselves. A few governors like Governor Mussolini in Florida mandated some things. But in general people made foolish decisions on their own. One can't blame Trump for foolishly listening.
I was under the impression the use of "bunny" for something easy came from skiing. Doesn't everyone start on the bunny hill? I was not aware it could have come from somewhere else.
Johnson suggesting a property tax increase is a big surprise to me. He liked to talk about having courage to get things done, but all I saw him push for were things that his core supporters wanted, which is not courageous at all. Regarding putting more money in schools, on borrowed money means the next mayor would have to do the hard part and come up with money to pay for it, not Johnson. I disagree with Johnson on a number of things, and think his refusal to give straight answers is cowardly, but if he is willing to do the actual courageous part and raise taxes to pay for his programs, then I respect that.
But how is he going to balance the budget the following year without another tax increase? Without structural change to the bloated Chicago workforce or pension reform, the tax increases only serve to drive away residents and businesses, further shrinking the tax base and requiring more and more property tax increases from those that remain.
I want an end to all the waste involved in streetscaping & unneeded bike lanes.
A total waste of tax money!
Oh yeah. Chicago is going to need cuts and more tax increases to avoid bankruptcy. Tough times ahead.
No property tax hike promises are just wrong. Does the price of a gallon of diesel fuel in a fire engine not go up? How about city workers health insurance, parts for truck repairs, concrete for sidewalk restoration? A better pledge is to keep taxes in line with inflation.
Trump's policy program: Deport 11 million + people to destroy many vital industries and damage others. Impose across the board tariffs on imported goods to impose massive sales tax increases on almost all consumers and destroy many businesses dependent on imports. Take health care away from millions of Americans; jail journalists and political opponents. Abandon Ukraine. That's it--not a single positive policy.
His supporters say he tells it like it is. So did Hitler.
I’m having a hard time reconciling that so many very religious Christians and Jews are making a deal with the Devil.
I'm a retired CPD sergeant. The mayor cannot "hire" detectives like he can hire truck drivers or laborers. Police officers, after a certain amount of time on the job, take a detectives exam following which a results based list is made and posted. Officers are then promoted to that rank, go to training and are assigned to the detective division. Keep in mind that every officer promoted to detective means one less patrol officer to answer calls. And if the hiring of new officers doesn't keep pace, the overall number of officers will shrink. Johnson's promise to hire 200 detectives was BS and because voters weren't up to speed on the process they bought his nonsense through no fault of their own. Johnson is a bloviating huckster and the city will be better off when he's ousted.
I was a fan of Lori Lightfoot. While she had somewhat of an abrasive manner, I felt she was smart and capable. Mayor of Chicago is an almost impossible job.
Well, I suppose there had to be at least one in the world. But compared to the clown show at city hall now...
So you were the one!
I agree with you that Mayor of Chicago is an impossible job. I'd like to see Eric poll his readers with the question: "If you didn't have to run a campaign, would you take the job as Chicago Mayor?" (I take out campaigning because I think trying to raise money and the job of campaigning puts most people off of elected office.) Everyone loves to rip apart every Mayor and criticize every decision, but I'd be shocked if 1% would take the job.
My vote would be "hell no"
I'd take it, just so I could get rid of the awful unused bike lanes, all of the unnecessary streetscaping, make sure that street sweeping went until December & fire all the incompetents that don't do any actual work, but are hacks with patronage jobs & huge pensions!
I'd also let them all strike & hire permanent replacements who get Social Security & no pensions!
Love the PS today.with the addition of the quotables reminding us of the dangers of Trump. Unfortunately, anyone I would like to send them to either live in Illinois, California or "6 months and a day" in Florida. Only swing states matter any more in presidential elections. Sad!!
Voted on Saturday. Not for Trump. But you know I have to go after your Covid Trump stats if you want to be "fair and accurate", so I did "the math". 424,324 deaths under Trump/Pence administration (1,267/million or .1267% of Americans). 795,163 deaths under Biden/Harris administration (.2375%). Now I realize the Biden/Harris administration has been through 3+ years of Covid while Trump had barely a year, but Biden had a vaccine when he took office and there were more deaths in 2021 than in 2020. The CDC has said that the death count in the US has been so high during the Biden/Harris administration because citizens have become more reckless in their behavior towards Covid.
You can look at the difference of .1267% (Trump/Pence) and .2375% (Biden/Harris) two ways. It can be a difference of .1108% (Slightly over 1 person per 1,000, my preference.) or as an increase of 87%. (Your preference.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_pSB_hnPP0
This is just one reason why if I were a Dem candidate I would NOT try to use Covid against the Trump admin in this election. Anyone who lived through and survived the pandemic now has very baked-in beliefs about what went down, and though I certainly think that Trump badly (and possibly criminally) mishandled the pandemic, many Trumpers and non-Trumpers alike feel their freedoms were needlessly compromised by general government overreach, and today that means the Biden admin.
It's called the power of disinformation. Trump supporters would have us believe that any restrictions were illegal. But who has the right to go out in public and make me sick,? I had Covid twice. I'm a heart patient and a diabetic. Yes, I know I can choose to wear a mask and get shots. But why should I need to worry about going out in public and catching it from someone that refuses reasonable restrictions? My activities don't stop them from doing their things. Why they should they be allowed to endanger mine?
I have family members who still refuse to get vaccinated because Trump told them it was bad. The reckless behavior in the years since Biden took over is a direct result of Trump encouraging it.
Yes, the pandemic wouldn't have snowballed into a massive death toll if precautions and proper advice had been taken seriously to begin with. Trump deliberately forced the political message to ignore it while ridiculing initial efforts by the CDC and other health organizations to effect the response needed.
After vaccines became available, covid deaths in Pro-Trump counties have been substantially higher than Pro-Biden . If Trump were to lose by a tiny percentage of swing state voters, it would be interesting to see of any of those votes would have made a difference. Highly unlikely scenario, but in this race, who knows.
When did Trump tell anyone that getting vaccinated was “bad”? He encouraged it. I think that there is some Chinese whispering taking effect here. If your family members never got vaccinated, it sure as hell isn’t because of anything Trump told them (If Trump told them to jump off a cliff, would they do so?).
I will amend my comment by saying he didn't specifically demonize the COVID vaccines. He merely spread anti-vax conspiracies long before COVID came along, and pushed modern-day snake oil remedies before the vaccines became available. His followers were already primed to reject vaccines in general, so yes, in a way he did tell them the vaccine was bad.
I don't know if they would jump off a cliff today, but who knows?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8577882/
Actually, no, in no way did he tell them that the vaccines were bad. He announced to the world that he had been vaccinated and boosted, encouraged everyone else to follow suit, and praised the vaccines as “one of the great achievements in human history”.
As I have said many times, there is never any dearth of things that Trump actually says and does that shock, appall, disgust and outrage. Accusing him of things that are patently, verifiably false seems a pointless exercise to me.
And now he says he will put anti-vax lunatic Robert Kennedy Jr in charge of all medical policy of the country if he wins.
Junior says all vaccines are bad, so that must include the smallpox one he got as an infant, that wiped out smallpox forever on the planet & the polio vaccine he got as a child, that eliminated it in America & most of the world!
Calling him a lunatic is about as mild as I can go, he's extremely dangerous to the actual health of American society as a whole.
Millions will die if Junior is in charge of health policy!
Yes, if he said it would make America great again.
Trump mishandled the the COVID crisis and was the cause of unnecessary deaths because of his incompetence and vanity (he thought he knew more than medical experts). President Biden inheried a financial and health crisis in 2021 and his administration strove to alleviate both crises, taking the advice of experts in both fields. Fiddling around with the figures and presenting Trump and President Biden as if they are equally at fault is bothsidesism at its worst.
Bothsidesism! 😂
Did you watch the video? Can you be a lttle more specific on the “fiddling around with the figures” claim. 🤷♂️
Trump rejected the idea of wearing a mask because he was afraid he'd look silly with his face makeup coming off/smearing when he removed it. His personal vanity drove this one simple act that could have helped reduce spread. Even though Project Warp Speed delivered vaccines in record time under his administration, he helped the anti-science sing of his party convince Rs to reject vaccines (in addition to dampening mask wearing). The most interesting stat I find about COVID deaths is the divergence of the number of deaths in Red counties (where vaccine rates were lower) and Blue counties (where vaccine rates were higher). Trump's use of his bully pulpit (i.e., his personal "virtue" signaling) helped drive COVID death rates higher.
Where do all of you get this “Trump encouraged rejection of vaccines” crap from? Google “Trump Covid vaccination”. He got vaccinated himself, proclaimed it to the world, and encouraged everyone else to do so. He also referred to their development as “one of the great achievements in human history”. How are those words anything other than a ringing endorsement?
"Always answer the door wearing a coat. ..."
Who answers the door anymore?
I've always heard it's smart (in a game theory way) to vote "No" on all the judges. Not sure if it's true but it's what I do anyway.
You vote "NO" on all judges because all but one or two are worthless hacks that got there by proclaiming their fealty to Mike Madigan!
You're wrong, Garry. There are plenty of qualified, dedicated judges.
Those who know share that information at VoteForJudges.org.
Ridiculous, that's a group that always wants every judge retained, no matter how incompetent they are!
It's not *a* group. It's a nonpartisan site that aggregates evaluation information from 14 bar associations in the region. And if it wanted "every judge retained," it wouldn't make it crystal clear about all the candidates who received "Not qualified/Not recommended" ratings.
The bar association recommendations are a pathetic joke. They just want the truly rotten & obviously corrupt judges gone, but never go after the other 99% of the mediocre & incompetent clowns that Madigan inflicted on us. Illinois has no standards to be a judge, other than to be a lawyer that passed the bar exam. So a lawyer in years past, paid off Madigan with campaign contributions & maybe even legally added a Irish sounding name to their own & voila, they get elected.
If we can fire all of them at one election, maybe the Springfield Bribetakers, AKA the Legislature will get the message & create legal standards for lawyers to pass before they can even be considered for a judgeship!
There is some truth to what you say. But you are being overly negative and cynical. Trust me on this. I consider myself negative and cynical about many things involving Illinois politics. I grew up on the south side and personally witnessed much of it in my own family. But I believe there are judges that do good jobs.
I strongly encourage you to reconsider that approach. Having good, fair, and qualified judges is extremely important and it is so incredibly EASY to vote an INFORMED ballot for judges in Cook County! I'm woefully disappointed more people don't do it since we have a great resource here that very few places do.
Here is the VERY SIMPLE APPROACH that I recommend to all my friends.
1. Go to Ballotopedia.org, put in your address and get your sample ballot so you know what judges will be on your ballot.
2. Visit VoteForJudges.org (https://www.VoteForJudges.org/) for plenty of information on the judges on your ballot. Bar Associations have committees of lawyers who do the work of evaluating judicial candidates based on their answers to questionnaires, interviews, and lawyers' personal courtroom experience with judges. You can pick one of the larger Bar Associations or look at an Alliance of 13 Bar Associations.
3. If you don't want to read details, the site makes it SUPER EASY to see clearly who is rated as Not Qualified/Not Recommended. There are obvious patterns where a few judges are rated poorly by several (or all) Associations. Just search for a judge candidate's name to see how those with legal and courtroom experience evaluate them, and if they get bad ratings, then vote no only for those.
Don't vote "no" on all; but definitely do vote "no" on those who are listed as not qualified.
Here's how my friend Annie Logue shared it on her Facebook page:
"My fellow Cook Countians, we will be voting on the retention of a whole slew of judges. Do yourself a favor and go to https://www.voteforjudges.org/, then make a list of those judges who are not recommended by various bar associations, and make sure you vote no on those people. (K. Flanagan, Gray, O'Malley, Wright, Varga, Marino, Perez, if you don't even want to click through.)
If you are being sued, if your kid has been charged with a crime, if your best friend is getting divorced, do you want that case heard by a judge who was Not Recommended by most bar associations? No, you do not. You can take notes into the voting booth, so take them in!"
Really funny of the vile, insane teachers union demanding limits on campaign contributions, since I get at least two giant bed sheet sized postcards a day from them either attacking one candidate in the district school board race or promoting their stooge in that same race!
And after I posted this, I read a Tribune editorial saying the same thing, but in a far longer screed of theirs.
Regarding continued talk of repealing the ACA: "Do these ghouls even care?"
Of course they don't...
What's interesting is that I don't know what the GOP objections are or what they plan in its place. Is because of the requirement that everyone have insurance? Does anyone remember why we have Obamacare? Medical facilities, particularly in rural areas due to treating the poor for free. The Hippocratic Oath says they need to do it. Poor people were going without routine care. Then they were becoming seriously ill and requiring emergency care when routine maintenance would have fixed things. Yes I realize many people, never sick a day in their lives, chafed at being forced into having insurance. It's a stupid risk, no matter what one's political persuasion, considering the costs of even a minor illness or procedure. Imagine a $200,000 heart surgery without insurance which can happen to anyone at any age. Guess who would be first in line to demand that someone else pay for it. Before Obamacare, I had a $10,000 medical bill- without insurance. It took me awhile to get out from under that. Is it because a Democrat came up with the idea? I have even seen online comments from some saying that not everyone is entitled to medical care. Ah, Marie Antoinette medicine- let them get sick and die! You know when talking about the so-called "progressive agenda", we often have government regulations and programs because we can't trust all Americans to be nice to others or not cheat them. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need government laws and programs. Does anyone around here see anything that looks like an ideal world?
I truly don't know, either. And it's not like the ACA is perfect, but the overall result has been an improvement over what we had before.
As a non-Trump Republican, I wince when less than half-truths are brought up to challenge him. It hurts the cause. Politifact rated the "drink bleach" comment as mostly false. USA ranking on the WHO list of countries by obesity rate is #13 (43% adults with BMI over 30). Canada is at #76 with a 27% rate. Obesity was a major drive or Covid-19 deaths. I'm not enough of a statistician to track Covid deaths and obesity rates world-wide but there is likely a high correlation.
You're right -- he didn't say "drink bleach." What he actually suggested was injecting disinfectant. Much better...
According to Snopes.com, what you are saying is a falsehood that many people have been repeating.
Oh, well if Snopes said it isn't true I guess this clip of him actually suggesting it must be fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zicGxU5MfwE
I heard him asking questions which appear to be a part of a discussion he was having with scientists. Did you hear him suggesting to the public that they inject disinfectant? Those are very different things.
He suggested injecting disinfectant. That is an insane suggestion that he made on national TV. It doesn't matter that he was suggesting the health officials look into because, again, it was an insane idea that the President of the United States of America shouldn't have even hinted at.
Not that anyone took his advice to do that. Oh, wait: https://time.com/5835244/accidental-poisonings-trump/
He was videoed and quoted. Or was AI already in use?
With all the political stuff going on, I think it is time to identify all the political consultants and experts who help run campaigns.
For example, who is the political genius that tells candidates to send oversized postcards and communications out to folks? I guess the idea is we will read this first? Me, I throw them all away unread. Do not clog my mailbox please. And I suspect the oversized stuff costs the campaign more money. Who are these geniuses?
Also, I would like to identify and thank the person who hired Tony Hinchcliffe for Trump’s New York rally. You spent good money helping Harris, big thanks! And he was not even funny…heck even the Trumpers were not laughing.
I find it interesting that Trump can use words like garbage, scum, and the enemy when referring to various others and nobody blinks an eye, not even the press. Yet this jerk at his hatefest speaks the same words and everyone is suddenly horrified.
I recycle the bedsheet sized postcards, once I've ripped off my name & address & shred that part.
Re: Schmich's find
I offer this from British mystery novelist Josephine Tey, writing in "The Singing Sands" (1936):
When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in mirrors and buys things to deck itself out in.
But that is merely personal conceit.
Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable.
You can never convince Vanity that anyone else is of the slightest importance; he just doesn't understand what you are talking about.
I am regularly baffled by government arithmetic and journalist lack of math skills or skepticism. The Tribune article today said that the current City of Chicago property tax levy is $1.77 billion. The new levy, with the $300 million increase, will be $2.07 billion. That is a 16.9% tax increase. I have no idea how that comes to 4% for homeowners. But the fact is that homeowners, renters (vis property owners), small businesses, and larger commercial entitles will collectively pay it. This increase is permanent, and likely to continue to increase annually, as the city and CPS continue to find new ways to spend money and do nothing to reduce spending.
I could be because commercial real estate and rental property get a bigger increase than owner-occupied units
Possibly. It is all very opaque. Commercial property is assessed at 25% of market value and houses are 10%. I know condos are different. I know that commercial property assessments depend on a lot of usage estimates. I don't know of any city or county report that makes values or collections clear.
So who gets hit more on residential - homeowners, condo owners, or renters? On business what is the breakdown of retail, office, production, warehousing, etc. ?
I'm disappointed, Mark. You're usually one of my photos in explaining things. But no matter how you slice it, Johnson made promises on which he is now backtracking. I suspect JBs telling him it wasn't going to come from Springfield didn't help. Richard M. Daley often went to Springfield and they gave it up without a whimper. Johnson can't even get things out of what used to be called a rubber stamp. Thank God!
Gotos, not photos. Damn auto typing.
I am a great admirer of President Obama, but no, his insinuations about Trump’s culpability in Covid deaths should not have been played up by the Harris campaign, for the simple fact that they are so misleading, misinformative, and easy to refute.
The continued contention that the U.S.’s high death rate from Covid was attributable to lax protocols is absurd. Does no one recall businesses and schools being closed for months? Mask and social distancing mandates being in place everywhere? Not being able to visit loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes? Not being able to get appointments with doctors? Not being able to go to church? If not, what planet were you inhabiting four and a half years ago?
To understand why the per capita death rate from Covid in the U.S. was so high, one merely need take into account an established epidemiological fact that, while beyond dispute, has been mysteriously underreported: Covid may have been an equal opportunity infector, but the only people that were ever really at grave risk of dying from it were elderly people and obese people. 78% of Covid deaths were from people that were obese. The U.S. has one of the highest obesity rates in the world (its rate of morbid obesity is double that of Canada’s), and is particularly prevalent among people of color. That is why the American death rate was so high, and the rate among blacks was even higher.
It is not clear why the media were as aggressive as they were in suppressing this rather important data point (one suspects a sensitivity to potential accusations of “fat shaming”), but it’s abundantly clear how its omission has allowed misinformation of the sort that President Obama waded into in that speech to perpetuate.
There is no shortage of awful things to be said about Trump. It is neither necessary, nor helpful, to make stuff up.
I would say 100% of COVID deaths were due to people contracting the virus that causes it. In that regard, Trump downplayed and even aggressively undermined the advice of health professionals. Yes, we had lockdowns and work-from-home, but we also had a large swath of people determined to ignore any and all safety measures, even resorting to violence when called out on their behavior. People at risk died because selfish narcissists following Trump's lead helped spread a deadly disease.
Not to mention, in 2018 Trump dismissed the pandemic response team that Obama had put together that would have sounded the alarm and provided much needed early guidance
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/
You know, you’re right. If it just hadn’t been for Trump and his malign meddling, then the transmission rate and death rate would have been zero. Just like every other country on Earth.
Sarcasm aside, if you look at South Korea's response it seems pretty clear that their quick reaction and public support led to a lower transmission rate and therefore fewer deaths per capita. They had around 12,000 deaths compared to 1M in the US.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9669502/
An even clearer explanation for the difference in deaths per capita: global obesity rate rankings: U.S., 13th, South Korea, 175th.
Rather than continue to butt heads with you on this, I will simply concede that Americans' unhealthy lifestyles led to more people dying than might otherwise, but that what I said is also true -- South Korea, a country a quarter the size but with 20% more people than California, managed to only see 18% of its population reported getting COVID, while the US saw 24% reported (which was no doubt lower than the actual number).
In other words, a country with a much higher population density than us managed to keep more of its people from getting the virus in the first place. (Which, by the way, also led to them returning to normal much sooner than we did.) Make of that what you will.
Ummm, it was more than just obese people that got sick.
And yet I don’t know one person who hasn’t “contracted the virus”. Probably 90% of Americans have had it at least once. Thank goodness the Biden administration rescinded those lockdowns and safety measures and we could get on with our lives.
I agree with most of the time. It would be nice if we could trust everything coming out of the mouths of leaders. But Trump wasn't a medical expert. Too many people ignored medical and public health experts to listen to him. Who is to blame for that?
Your last sentence is the key one. You can have a constructive debate about whether a different President would have been able to implement (and develop public support for) “better” policies. But, even if I were to conclude that Trump did an exemplary job on Covid, he is still staggeringly unsuited to be President for so many other reasons.
And I certainly don’t think he did an exemplary job on Covid, but blaming him for the death toll is just foolish. Like blaming Biden for the invasion of Ukraine.
Good points! Remember that Trump didn't mandate a lot of behavior. People did that to themselves. A few governors like Governor Mussolini in Florida mandated some things. But in general people made foolish decisions on their own. One can't blame Trump for foolishly listening.