Top O’ the Briefing
Happy Friday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Zwyrina always felt that her signature anchovy/beet casserole was underappreciated at the annual Pai Gow charity social.
Well, it’s Friday and I just wasn’t in the mood to write another “Wow, Biden has really wrecked this joint” leadoff about the present miserable state of this once-great Republic. So I decided to go with focusing on the demise of a once-great American city instead.
We will return to our regularly scheduled “Biden Gloom and Doom” on Monday.
Perhaps I’m only seeing the bad stuff, but the news that comes out of Chicago never seems to be good, at least since the 2016 World Series. That was pretty bad news for Cleveland, come to think of it.
Look, I love Chicago, or used to, anyway. I’m half Polish American, and the city is full of my people. Pierogi are easy to find. One of my favorite comedy clubs to play in America is there. I haven’t spent much quality time there in recent years and I wonder if my fond memories would hold up in the city I read about now.
Back to the bad news.
There are so many shootings on any given weekend in the Windy City that Americans are almost numb to the news. Much of it is, of course, confined to the worst parts of the city. Talk to any Chicago resident who doesn’t live in the worst parts, and they’ll tell you everything is fine. I’ve had that conversation a lot, most recently with a lawyer from Chicago last Saturday.
The city also suffers from a clown show government running the place. We had a couple of stories yesterday that were real head-scratchers. The first is from Catherine:
In the latest example of Democrats ignoring suffering U.S. citizens to spend lavishly on foreigners, Chicago’s woke mayor signed a $26 million contract for migrant camps.
The six location zones for the camps would hold between 200 and 1,400 migrants, Breitbart reported. The Democrat government of Chicago has already raised ire among its citizens, particularly black citizens, who rightly feel that the sanctuary city is taking resources away from residents to help illegal aliens.
Welcome to Sanctuary City Madness!
That’s just a fraction of what Chicago will spend on the so-called migrant problem. The overall cost is a heavy contributor to a projected budget deficit of over $500 million, per ABC7Chicago. As the Dems are fond of saying, that doesn’t seem sustainable.
It gets even more ludicrous. Rick writes that Mayor Johnson now wants his thoroughly broke city to get into — I kid you not — the grocery business:
“All Chicagoans deserve to live near convenient, affordable, healthy grocery options,” Johnson said in a statement. “We know access to grocery stores is already a challenge for many residents, especially on the South and West sides… I am proud to work alongside partners to take this step in envisioning what a municipally owned grocery store in Chicago could look like.”
Gee, I wonder what’s happening on the South and West sides that’s keeping grocery stores away?
My headline question was, of course, mostly tongue-in-cheek. Still, it does look like Chicago is an asylum that permanently bequeaths the keys to the craziest inmates. As we’ve seen in other super blue cities, there will be no Republicans, or even moderate Democrats, elected again. Johnson is already making his predecessor Lori Lightfoot look like Cato the Elder.
The reality is that Chicago pols can continue their spendthrift ways as long as so many wealthy Democrats continue to live there and provide a tax source that’s happy to be gouged.
Until they get fed up and move to Texas or Arizona (we’re overrun with former Chicagoans) and decide to start screwing things up in a warmer clime.
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The Mailbag of Magnificence
This is from our friend Momster Mom:
Dear Mr, Kruiser,
Your Non-sequitur brought to mind the pair of painted clogs worn by my uncle when my grandparents emigrated from England to New England over 120 years ago. He was then about two years old and wore a blue dress and clogs. In those days little boys wore dresses until they graduated to short pants.
Thanks for dredging this family memory up from the swamp that is my mind.
(My cousin still has those tiny wooden shoes.)
I think that a lot of little boys still wear dresses — wait, that’s probably a different conversation. The word “clogs” has always amused me for some reason. In fact, the concept amuses me. Some guy in Holland just got sloshed one night and said, “Dude, we’ve got all this wood — we should totally make shoes.”
Thank you for letting me be part of your remembering.
Brice is back with this thought:
When Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court by Obama the mainstream media presented Garland as a moderate… which is further proof that even moderate Democrats are Communists.
I’ve been saying for years that progressives are pulling the Democrats so far leftward that they’re redefining the center for everyone. Actual moderate Democrats still exist — they’re just Republicans in the northeast.
Corky writes:
Ave, Kruiser.
Spelford keeps asking when his “Hamsters in Tutus Travelling Circus” will get a mention. I have no answer.
Anyway, it’s just seems that the GOP is being led by people whose collective intelligence is not quite that of my last grilled cheese sandwich. It had onions, but still. With the current disaster residing in DC, if there was anything in the GOP/RNC leadership resembling cojones, brains or a spine, they could run a sack of wet mice and recreate the 1984 election. New Hampshire pretty much negates this potential. In the words of the immortal PJ O’Roarke, WTF? WTF-ingF? I guess I’m just looking for some ray of hope someplace. I hate the alternatives.
We’ll see about Spelford.
I think that the re-election of Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel to a fourth term as chairwoman of the Republican National Committee was the GOP hanging out a sign that says, “Abandon hope, all ye who register here.” Entrenched Beltway Republicans don’t care if they win, they just want to keep getting invited to the right happy hours and dinners.
Kudos for spelling cojones correctly. Too many internet types misspell it “cajones.”
We’ll finish with this from Joseph:
Good morning Stephen,
Just a quick note to say I am an avid reader of your work and look forward to daily morning laughs. That said I would just like to say that I have not been 100% sold on DeSantis to this point. However, the more I read your take on him the more I am leaning his way. His response to this storm has been exemplary and your take on the situation has put another plus in the DeSantis’ column.
Keep up the excellent work.
Thank you very much for that. I’ve been a big fan of DeSantis’s work ever since the pandemic. Even so, I was still kind of hoping for a Trump Revenge Tour. As I’ve written many times, however, the Trump who’s running now isn’t the guy who I enthusiastically voted for just three years ago. The erratic Truth Social raving started to bore me, which is something that Trump had never done before. Who knows how this is going to turn out? I won’t make predictions. I will say that the grief I get for writing anything good about DeSantis lessens with each column.
Thanks to everyone for keeping in touch!
Everything Isn’t Awful
This is what the writer’s block days feel like.
Interesting.. 😅 pic.twitter.com/Q6mGHaClrJ
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) September 20, 2023
PJ Media
Me. The Right Loses When It Adopts Leftist Narrative Euphemisms
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They have come for your children. Biden to Launch Kiddie Klimate Korps Jobs Training Program
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What Does the White House Call the Border Situation? KJP Won’t Answer That Question.
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Please say no. Is Kari Lake Running for the Senate?
Good Guy With a Gun Comes to the Rescue After Bad Guy Assaults Clerk
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Paying Iranian Terrorists Billions in Ransom Is Nothing To Brag About, Mr. President
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Liberty in Peril: Thomas Sowell’s Warnings on Marxism, Censorship
Trump’s Plan to Visit Auto Workers May Have Democrats Scrambling
‘Tool Maker’ and ‘Stacker of Wheat’ Will Now Become ‘Grocery Clerk to the World’
VDH. Our Self-Induced Catastrophe at the Border
Townhall Mothership
#WINNING. Texas Defies Joe Biden, Reinstalls Razor Wire to Keep Illegal Migrants Out
Hollywood Actor Finally Realizes the Truth About the Democratic Party
Dave McCormick Launches Senate Bid in Pennsylvania
Basement Time! Biden’s Suffers a Second Awkward Moment In Less Than 24 Hours
About that great NYC gun control…
Cam&Co. How much should we trust crime stats?
Dear Gen Z: Get armed, get trained, start carrying, because YOU are your own first responder
Eric Clapton helps raise big bucks for RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard shows her support
VA legislature hanging in the balance
Is time finally up for the Senate’s “golden” boy — and his wife?
Katie Porter Somehow Manages to Become an Even Worse Person
Carrie Underwood Warns Parents About the ‘Struggle’ of Raising Kids in Today’s America
House Speaker McCarthy Denies Ukraine President Zelensky’s Request to Address Congress
Mediaite’s sob story about John Fetterman gets roundly mocked
‘Newark Airport’ trends as people share how much their meals cost
Gavin Newsom flew from Calif. to NY to tell the UN that burning gas is destroying the planet
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‘Unwoke’ With Kevin and Kruiser #88: Howard Stern’s Prissy Wokeness Is a Tough Sell
Grand New Ideas for Congressional Dress Codes
Merrick Garland Proves He Should Have Been Impeached Already
McCarthy and Centrist Lawmakers in Secret Talks to Reach Short-Term Budget Deal
Is the DeSantis Campaign in Trouble?
Around the Interwebz
‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’ Hits Tracking With $100M-$125M Opening Weekend Projection
I love me when I’m drunk. New study looks again at how alcohol influences attraction
Why Is Sneakily Leaving Called an “Irish” Goodbye or Exit?
Bee Me
Herod’s Daughter Kinda Wishing She Had Just Asked For A Cute Purse Or Something https://t.co/UjIHwp67kJ pic.twitter.com/FuzirmGNBO
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) September 21, 2023
The Kruiser Kabana
Kabana Gallery
The Train, Baie-Saint-Paul, 1922 #gagnon #clarencegagnon https://t.co/qHl515HjxO pic.twitter.com/yRhcvJerHD
— Clarence Gagnon (@artist_gagnon) March 30, 2023
Kabana Tunes
I was in the mood for something crunchy to kick off the weekend. Got to see Dio live in the ’80s and it was all that.
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