Oh dear. pic.twitter.com/3QkAujz4KI
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) October 7, 2021
John Kass used to be the only reason to read The Chicago Tribune:
What has happened to Chicago? Here’s what happened:
The Democrats happened.
The George Floyd riots happened. Democrats wanted their voters whipped to a frenzy in 2020, and got what they wanted. Lightfoot and other liberal Black mayors across the country stood back as their administrations, and the rule of law in their cities were devoured by BLM and other elements of the hard Jacobin left that now rules the Democrat Party, with Biden as its empty, titular, wobbling head.
Democrats let the Floyd protests drive chaos. Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, our very own Gov. Commodious Maximus, didn’t want the National Guard in the city at first. They were worried about the optics, they wanted the left wing good and angry, and Donald Trump out of the White House. Chicago has never recovered.
Police were demonized, assaulted and seriously injured. The sense of lawlessness in urban America grew. And unlike the Jan. 6 capitol rioters, most of the violent in Chicago and other Democratic urban centers were excused. The BLM rioters were not condemned as terrorists and hunted down. Instead, there was a deal:
The deal was the Democrats would buy off the left with that $3.5 trillion Biden/Pelosi spending spree (or is it really $6 trillion?)—the neo-Marxist fantasy that is now failing in Washington.
Federal bailout money came to the cities, and (no surprise) they spent it without imposing structural controls on public worker pensions and other aspects of bloated government that sucks the life out of taxpayers. And through all of this, the criminal justice system was failing.
At least Foxx made good on her leftist rhetoric. She dropped more felony murder cases than her predecessor and Soros got what he paid for.
Foxx also stopped prosecuting shoplifting cases, and as a result gangs of boosters hit high-end stores, adding to the general feeling that the city succumbed to lawlessness.
And just the other day, just minutes after Mayor Lightfoot and her Police Supt. David Brown posed for photos at an anti-crime event, telling residents they had control over the violence, there was another gang shooting right where they had posed for publicity pictures.
And then came another shootout, when five suspects in a deadly street gang battle on the West Side—all of it on video—were released with Foxx’s prosecutors saying there was insufficient evidence.
The rationale was that both sides were “mutual combatants,” an assinine line of reasoning used by Foxx in the past.
I hear that the same idiocy was used when no charges brought against two cars of shooters on the Dan Ryan expressway. Their victim was Denise M. Hugelet, 67, a retired special education teacher, a grandmother from the Southwest suburbs, who was killed in the crossfire while going home from a White Sox game.
If someone prominent were shot, say a U.S. Senator, would Foxx have been so dismissive and cavalier? Not bloody likely.
Foxx and the cops have clashed over numerous cases, where detectives say they develop evidence, and Foxx declines to charge. A recent example among many was the Aug. 15 murder of seven-year-old Serenity Broughton. She and her younger sister Aubrey were shot while sitting in the back of their parents’ car on the city’s Northwest Side. The little girls were found hugging each other.
Detectives pushed for charges. They reportedly had the suspects phones pinged at the scene. Foxx denied the charges. The outraged detective commander tried to override the prosecutor and failed when City Hall stepped in on Foxx’s side.
One like this after another, street gangs carving up Chicago, blood in the streets, anarchy and chaos, until finally, this week, Lightfoot lashed out.
Go here to read the rest. Crime and Politics have always walked arm and arm in Chicago and the people can go pound sand. The Chicago Way rules now icy blue Illinois with calamitous consequences for all still living in this Failed State.
They recently discussed this in general on the 10blocks podcast:
https://www.city-journal.org/stubborn-facts-about-crime
Kass is right on target. Along the same lines, the blogger Second City Cop posted another solid essay at the Chicago Contrarian a couple of days ago. Both should be required reading for those who loved the old Chicago, which despite all its legendary faults remained a great city that was always worth visiting. You could not pay me enough to go to Chicago now, for any reason.
“She and her younger sister Aubrey were shot while sitting in the back of their parents’ car on the city’s Northwest Side. The little girls were found hugging each other.” Where is the global outrage over this?! They took the knee and burnt down cities over a convicted criminal who swallowed his stash of drugs and who taunted police for over thirty minutes to trying and get into the back of a police car. Yet these young children get barely a mention- actual innocent bystanders. I wouldn’t be surprised if the demise of Chicago into street violence was deliberate- a kind of let-them-kill each other strategy to clean out the city. Which is pathetic because you get collateral damage like those two girls and others.
Btw, that video of Biden struggling to talk because he his so drugged up is beyond belief.
Ezabelle, I’m no doctor, but I saw my Mom go through the stages of dementia a few years back, and I don’t believe Biden’s inability to function verbally is caused by any drug. It’s his brain losing its faculties. Everything about him, that we’re permitted to see anyway, screams a progressively worsening dementia: the look on his face, the way he walks, the way he tries to talk and frequently can’t make sense, even with a teleprompter…all of it. I have never heard of any drug actually prescribed for dementia patients that should have those effects; rather, they are intended to slow down the progress of the disease. I’m open to further knowledge anyone here may have, of course.
The people handling Biden are almost certainly criminals many times over, but their treatment of this man, much as I despise him and his foolish policies, is the worst crime of all, in my opinion.
Thanks Frank for the clarification. I stand corrected.