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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Chicago Violence Haunts Obama as Gun-Control Backers Left Cold |
| 2009-10-08 |
| (Bloomberg) -- At least 47 school-age children in Chicago have been killed in homicides, mostly by guns, since the month President Barack Obama took office. I think they mean "killed in homicides, mostly WITH guns." The guns weren't running around by themselves. Guns are tools, used by PEOPLE. Sheesh, only one sentence and Bloomberg's already revealed their biased agenda. The latest youth homicide in his adopted hometown was different only in that the attackers used splintered railroad ties and were captured on video broadcast globally. Oh right, no guns. The Sept. 24 attack prompted Obama to send his attorney general and education secretary to Chicago today after the killing tarnished the city's drive to win the 2016 Olympics. "The savage beating of Derrion Albert, recycled on television, embarrassed Chicago and the nation," said the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a civil-rights activist and founder of the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition. "You can't ignore the case." U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plan to appear at City Hall with Mayor Richard Daley in what the Obama administration described as a search for solutions to youth crime. They also will meet privately with students and parents. Chicago's violence has long burdened Obama's political career, including the embarrassment of a missed vote as a state senator that hurt his 2000 bid for Congress. Duncan, 44, a Chicago native and Obama friend, admits to "total failure" in curbing violence during his seven years as chief of the nation's third-largest school system, which serves more than 400,000 students, 85 percent of them living below the poverty line. Some gun-control advocates question the administration's timing as Duncan and Holder arrive after a highly publicized beating that didn't involve a gun. Missed Opportunities "Where there have been opportunities for the president to speak out about the issue of firearm violence, he has missed any number of opportunities," said Thom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. Doing so in the Albert case "provides the cover" to address youth violence without confronting the gun lobby, said Mannard, whose group's board of directors included Duncan until he left for his current post. The administration defended its record. "President Obama is committed to combating violence on our streets and in our schools, both in Chicago -- which has been particularly hard hit -- and around the nation," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said in a statement. "The administration has focused on the issue of youth violence from the outset." The beating death of Albert, 16, an honor student, renewed outrage and prompted a call to action in a city where 398 students were shot in the past 12 months, said Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools. Four teens have been charged in connection with Albert's killing. Obama Sermon The incident happened less than five miles from a church where Obama gave a sermon in July 2007 challenging the government, the gun lobby and the public to stop gun violence. "Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds," he told a standing-room congregation. "Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we've lost. The violence is unacceptable." The meddling do-gooders only want to focus on guns and racist victim-mongering, with no mention of, say, efforts to maintain stable two-parent families, or parental responsibility for the criminal actions of their minor children. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #9 Clearly the laws weren't tight enough, aa5839 |
| Posted by: lotp 2009-10-08 18:18 |
| #8 You can't be serious!? How can anybody get shot in a place that doesn't allow gun ownership by law abiding citizens? I'm flummoxed! |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2009-10-08 10:59 |
| #7 5-day waiting period for 2x4 sales! |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-10-08 10:57 |
| #6 Quagmire! |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-10-08 10:40 |
| #5 Walking piece of vomit will just hand out ObamaDollars and call it a day. |
| Posted by: Woozle Uneter9007 2009-10-08 10:18 |
| #4 Why, that community needs organized! |
| Posted by: Jefferson 2009-10-08 09:36 |
| #3 Unfortunately of little concern unless one must live there. It is barbarity in its most basic form, the barbarity with a subtle difference. Sir Richard Burton, the famous explorer, was right when he said "mere barbarism rarely disgusts: it is the unnatural union of civilization with savagery that makes the gorge rise." The incongruities are not grotesque enough to be amusing; they are merely ugly and painful. Remove civilization and the problem disappears. Then I heard the boom of the blood-lust song, and a thigh-bone beating on a tin pan gong. Vachel Lindsay |
| Posted by: Besoeker in Duitsland 2009-10-08 08:10 |
| #2 Gun control has never been a substitution for self control. Until communities have their own Anbar Awakening for their own interest, no amount of government 'concern' or 'redistribution' is going to solve the problem. Communities must realize most of their problems are created by the person in the mirror and directly address it or continue to exist in the environment they create for themselves. One of the key obstruction to change is loyalty to blood over loyalty to community. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-10-08 07:55 |
| #1 Only if Chicago school chilluns had a whole period devoted to singing the praises of Obama. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-10-08 01:07 |