WGN Radio 720 - Chicago's Very Own

Lou Manfredini: The best ways to keep your house cool

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 02:30 PM PDT

A heat wave is about to hit the Chicago area and the great Mr. Fix-It, Lou Manfredini, joins John to talk about what people can do to make your home feel cool and how to best maximize your energy efficiency.

Jan. 6 panel: Trump 'betrayed the trust of the American people'

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 05:15 AM PDT

(NewsNation) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol said former President Donald Trump refused to accept the results of the democratic process in its second public hearing Monday.

"We had an election, Mr. Trump lost but he refused to accept the results of the democratic process," said the panel's chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson in the televised hearing.

Members of the committee delved deeper into the defeated Republican president's false claims of voter fraud that fueled his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and provoked a mob of his supporters to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol.

"He [Trump] didn't have the numbers. He went to court. He still didn't have the numbers. He lost. But he betrayed the trust of the American people," Thompson said. "He ignored the will of the voters. He lied to his supporters and the country."

The panel opened the hearing after a 30-minute delay as Trump's former campaign manager Bill Stepien abruptly pulled out of testifying, citing a family emergency.

Stepien was expected to be a key witness and was originally subpoenaed for his public testimony.

The committee was told that Stepien's wife was in labor, according to Thompson.

Instead of Stepien's live testimony, the panel showed video of his previously recorded interview, given behind closed doors, about what the campaign team was telling Trump as he lost the 2020 presidential election. 

Stepien and other top aides testified that they believed the 2020 presidential race was too close to call on election night, but Trump nevertheless declared himself the winner.

"My belief, my recommendation was to say that votes were still being counted, it's too early to tell, too early to call the race," Stepien said in the recorded testimony.

Stepien and senior adviser Jason Miller testified that the festive mood at the White House on election night turned as Fox News announced Trump had lost the state of Arizona to Joe Biden, and aides worked to counsel Trump on what to do next. They pushed back against Rudy Giuliani who was encouraging Trump to declare himself the winner.

The hearing included testimony from NewsNation's political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was the Fox political editor leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

Thompson asked Stirewalt, "Did President Trump have any basis to declare victory on November 4, 2020?"

Stirewalt responded, "No."

During his testimony, Stirewalt explained the term "red mirage," where initial votes counted on Election Day tend to be Republican, as in-person votes are counted first. But then the vote count shifts once mail-in ballots start to be counted.

"Usually it's Election Day votes that count first," Stirewalt testified. "You expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it's not really a lead."

Stirewalt said it happens every time.

In a video played at the hearing, former Attorney General Bill Barr rejected Trump's claims of voter fraud.

"He was becoming detached from reality," said Barr, who resigned. "I didn't want to be a part of it."

Former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia B. J. Pak testified to the committee that Giuliani's claim of fraud and an alleged "suitcase full of ballots" was actually a "lockbox to make sure ballots were kept safe."

Giuliani was one of Trump's primary lawyers during the then-president's failed efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"Mr. Giuliani's claims were simply untrue and making such a claim was reckless," Pak said.

Pak abruptly resigned after Trump pressured Georgia state officials to overturn his presidential defeat.

Trump wanted to fire Pak as disloyal, but Pak stepped down after Trump's call urging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to overturn Biden's win in the state became public.

Pak was the top federal prosecutor in Atlanta who left his position on Jan 4, 2021, a day after an audio recording was made public in which Trump called him a "never-Trumper."

Former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt also testified about responding to baseless claims of election fraud in his city.

"Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania. There wasn't evidence of eight," he said. "We took seriously every case that was referred to us no matter how fantastical no matter how absurd and took every one of those seriously, including these."

Schmidt faced criticism as the state's election was called for Biden and testified about threats he received against him and his family.

 "After the President tweeted at me by name, calling me out the way that he did, the threats became much more specific, much more graphic," he said. "And included not just me by name but included members of my family by name, their ages, our address, pictures of our home."

Conservative election attorney Ben Ginsberg testified about the court cases brought by the Trump team over vote fraud claims.

"The 2020 election was not close," Ginsberg said. "And you just don't make up those sorts of numbers in recounts."

When asked if he was aware of any instance in which a court found the Trump campaign's fraud claims to be credible, Ginsberg said, "No, there was never that instance in all the cases that were brought."

"The simple fact is the Trump campaign did not make its case," he said.

Members of the committee said Sunday they have uncovered enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal indictment against Trump.

Lawmakers indicated that perhaps their most important audience member over the course of the hearings may be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump. They left no doubt as to their own view of whether the evidence is sufficient to proceed.

"Once the evidence is accumulated by the Justice Department, it needs to make a decision about whether it can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt the president's guilt or anyone else's," Rep. Adam Schiff of California said. "But they need to be investigated if there's credible evidence, which I think there is."

Monday's hearing takes place just days after the first in a series of hearings beginning last week that laid out the committee's initial findings gathered over an 11-month investigation. 

Thursday's hearing lasted approximately 90 minutes and was watched by roughly 20 million people across the six major American broadcast and cable networks that aired the program.

During the prime-time hearing, Americans watched footage of violent rioters infiltrating the country's symbol of democracy and heard testimony from a Capitol Police officer knocked unconscious and a filmmaker documenting the group who first breached Capitol security that day.

As he mulls another White House run, Trump insists the committee's investigation is a "witch hunt." Last week he said Jan. 6 "represented the greatest movement in the history of our country."

The Jan. 6 hearings have been decried as "political theater" by the GOP, and while there are some strong allegations being made by some of those testifying, the question in many viewers' minds is whether or not any actual charges could come out of the proceedings.

The Associated Press and the Hill contributed to this report.

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Bear market hits Wall Street as the S&P 500 dives 3.9%

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 08:57 AM PDT

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street tumbled into what's called a bear market Monday after fears about a fragile economy and rising interest rates sent the S&P 500 more than 20% below its record set early this year.

The index sank 3.9% in the first chance for investors to trade after getting the weekend to reflect on the stunning news that inflation is getting worse, not better. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was briefly down more than 1,000 points before finishing with a loss of 876.

At the center of the sell-off again was the Federal Reserve, which is scrambling to get inflation under control. Its main method to do that is to raise interest rates in order to slow the economy, a blunt tool that risks a recession if used too aggressively.

With the Fed seemingly pinned into having to get more aggressive, prices fell in a worldwide rout for everything from bonds to bitcoin, from New York to New Zealand. Some of the sharpest drops hit what had been big winners of the easier low-rate era, such as high-growth technology stocks and other former darlings of investors. Tesla slumped 7.1%, and Amazon dropped 5.5%. GameStop tumbled 8.4%.

"The best thing people can do is to not panic and don't sell at the bottom," said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, "and we're probably not at the bottom."

Some economists are speculating the Fed on Wednesday may raise its key rate by three-quarters of a percentage point. That's triple the usual amount and something the Fed hasn't done since 1994. Traders now see a 28% probability of such a mega-hike, up from just 3% a week ago, according to CME Group.

No one thinks the Fed will stop there, with markets bracing for a continued series of bigger-than-usual hikes. Those would come on top of some discouraging signals about the economy and corporate profits, including a record-low preliminary reading on consumer sentiment soured by high gasoline prices.

The economy is still holding up overall, but the danger is that the job market and other factors are so hot that they will feed into higher inflation. That's why the Fed is in the midst of a whiplash pivot away from the record-low interest rates it engineered earlier in the pandemic, which propped up stocks and other investments amid hopes of juicing the economy.

Wall Street's sobering realization that inflation is accelerating, not peaking, is also sending U.S. bond yields to their highest levels in more than a decade. The two-year Treasury yield shot to 3.36% from 3.06% late Friday in its second straight major move. It earlier touched its highest level since 2007, according to Tradeweb.

The 10-year yield jumped to 3.37% from 3.15%, and the higher level will make mortgages and many other kinds of loans more expensive. It touched its highest level since 2011.

The higher yields mean prices are tumbling for bonds, a relatively rare occurrence for them in recent decades. They're also a particularly painful hit for older and more conservative investors who depend on them as the safer parts of their nest eggs.

The gap between the two-year and 10-year yields has also narrowed sharply, a signal of weakening optimism about the economy. When the two-year yield tops the 10-year, an unusual occurrence, some investors see it as a sign of a looming recession.

Some of the biggest hits came for cryptocurrencies, which soared early in the pandemic as ultralow rates encouraged some investors to pile into the riskiest investments. Bitcoin tumbled more than 14% from a day earlier and dropped below $23,400, according to Coindesk. It's back to where it was in late 2020 and down from a peak of $68,990 late last year.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 151.23 points to 3,749.63 and dropped 21.8% below its record set early this year to put it into what investors call a bear market.

Bears hibernate, so bears represent a market that's retreating, said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. In contrast, Wall Street's nickname for a surging stock market is a bull market, because bulls charge, Stovall said.

The S&P 500 has lost nearly 9% in just three days. That's its worst such stretch since the earliest days of the coronavirus crash in March 2020. The Dow lost 876.05, or 2.8%, to 30,516.74 on Monday, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 530.80, or 4.7% to 10,809.23.

The coronavirus crash in early 2020 was Wall Street's last bear market, and it was an unusually short one that lasted only about a month. The S&P 500 got close to a bear market last month, but it didn't finish a day below the 20% threshold.

Michael Wilson, a strategist at Morgan Stanley who's been among Wall Street's more pessimistic voices, is sticking with his view that the S&P 500 could fall further to 3,400 even if the U.S. economy avoids a recession over the next year.

That would mark another roughly 9% drop from the current level, and Wilson said it reflects his view that Wall Street's earnings forecasts are still too optimistic, among other things.

With soaring price tags souring sentiment for shoppers, even higher-income ones, Wilson said in a report that "the next shoe to drop is a discounting cycle" as companies try to clear out built-up inventories.

Such moves would cut into their profitability, and a stock's price moves up and down largely on two things: how much cash a company generates and how much an investor will pay for it.

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Wintrust Business Lunch 6/13/22: Stocks plunge, housing affordability and Chicago's 'Techstars'

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 01:25 PM PDT

Segment 1: Ilyce Glink, owner of Think Glink Media and Best Money Moves, joins John to talk about how Friday's bad inflation report is still impacting the stock market, mortgage interest rates continuing to rise, the rise of "buy now pay later," and how the Fed will tackle inflation.

Segment 2: Chicago Inno's Senior Editor Jim Dallke tells John about the latest in startup innovation including the founder of Orbitz raising $10M for his travel startup Journera, Chicago startup Tripscout raising $10M to help you book a hotel on Instagram, Techstars naming12 startups to its latest Chicago class, and Rheaply, a startup that helps companies like Google and Exelon share equipment, raising $20M.

The best burgers in the greater Chicagoland area

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 01:04 PM PDT

When we say "Best Burger in Chicago," what comes to mind first?

Kevin Powell and Michael Piff agree on their favorite, but we don't think Kevin was prepared for the list that Michael brought with him for Part I of their "Burger Talk"...

Listen below for the full list of favorite burgers in the city and the list of favorite's in the suburbs!

For a visual on the tasty burgers discussed in the latest episode, here's a photo gallery featuring several of the spots Mike discussed.

  • Au Cheval - 800 W Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60607
  • Owen & Engine - 2700 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60647
  • The J. Parker - 1816 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60614
  • Red Hot Ranch - 3057 N Ashland Ave, Chicago, IL 60657
  • DryHop Brewers - 3155 N Broadway, Chicago, IL 60657
  • DMK Burger Bar - 2954 N Sheffield Ave, Chicago, IL 60657
  • The Region - 2057 W Roscoe St, Chicago, IL 60618
  • Butcher & The Burger - 1021 W Armitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60614
  • The Bad Apple - 1021 W Armitage Ave, Chicago, IL 60614
  • Kuma's Corner - 2900 W Belmont Ave, Chicago, IL 60618
  • Track's Bar & Grill - 108 W Main St, Cary, IL 60013
  • Bulldogs Grill -122 S Main St, Wauconda, IL 60084
  • Main Street Pub - 466 N Main St, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
  • Two Hound Red - 486 Pennsylvania Ave, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
  • Edzo's Burger Shop - 1571 Sherman Ave, Evanston, IL 60201
  • Craft Urban - 211 James St, Geneva, IL 60134
  • 302 W Front St, Wheaton, IL 60187
  • Empire Burgers & Brews - 48 W Chicago Ave, Naperville, IL 60540
  • Hackney's on Lake - 1514 E Lake Ave, Glenview, IL 60025

Photos by Michael Piff/WGN Radio

As mentioned in the episode, we'll be recording Part II of our "Burger Talk" from (The Original) Billy Goat Tavern. Tell us where your favorite burgers are from on Twitter at @KPowell720 and @Mike_Piff03.

Ukraine-Russia crisis update: Russian jets flying 75 feet from the ground

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 05:41 AM PDT

Journalist and editor of 'Ukrainian Freedom News' Joseph Lindsley joined Bob Sirott from Ukraine to deliver the latest news on the Ukraine-Russia crisis, including activity in East Ukraine, destruction in Bakhmut, and why Russian jets are flying low to the ground. You can find more updates on Joseph's website ukrainianfreedomnews.com. To donate to Joseph and his team's efforts to distribute supplies throughout Ukraine, click here.

Why younger women are at an increased risk for heart attacks

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 08:57 AM PDT

Dr. Kevin Most, Chief Medical Officer at Northwestern Medicine's Central DuPage Hospital, joined Bob Sirott this morning following the 9:30am newscast. Dr. Most shared details on the new vaccine for kids under five and why airlines should still require a negative COVID test for international travel. He also discussed women's heart health and why there have been an increase of heart attacks in younger women.

John Williams brings you a round of Speed Jokes, Part CCCLXXXIII, 6.13.22

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 01:01 PM PDT

John Williams brings you a round of Speed Jokes. Keep sending yours to JohnWilliams@wgnradio.com!

Wintrust Business Minute: Ferrero Candy to expand operations in Illinois

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 10:01 AM PDT

Steve Grzanich has the business news of the day with the Wintrust Business Minute.

Ferrero Candy is expanding its operations in Illinois.  It's announced plans to invest nearly $214 million to expand its facility in downstate Bloomington. The expansion will produce 200 additional jobs.

Also, after McDonald's suspended its operations in Russia over the invasion in Ukraine, a replacement is now catering in Moscow. Listen for more below:

Try this method to get rid of resort fees

Posted: 13 Jun 2022 08:45 AM PDT

Johnny Jet, travel influencer, joined Bob Sirott to share details about the latest travel tips, including how you should search for the best hotel deals and if you can avoid resort fees. He also talked about the latest in COVID testing requirements for airline travel, the increase in prices at some chain hotels, and what not to do if you recline your seat on planes.