Chicago on Fire? Sea Change? Maybe….

 

Nah, Chicago already burned, a couple of times: 1968 protests at the Democrat convention, the Haymarket riots, the 1871 Great Chicago Fire in which alcohol stored in people’s basements burned with a blue flame, while the larger and more devastating fire at Peshtigo, WI, raged for a couple of days, killed people and livestock, and destroyed 1,200,000 acres of woodland and farmland that October.  Ad no, it wan’st Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. The fire started down in that area. She was made into a scapegoat, but the charge against her was dropped. The only thing that survived that inferno was the water tower, still there, still standing tall.  https://www.weather.gov/grb/peshtigofire

Something is stirring in the air, that’s for sure.

Remember the Portland riots that weren’t really, riots? No, they were just young people manifesting some self-expression, right? And they’re still going on, too.

And then they decided to try to burn down city-owned buildings and the Mayor of Portland, OR, was upset because his beeyootiful city was/is being torn apart by the raggedy-man protesters and it’s all Trump’s fault because they obviously work for him and he’s just all butthurt about it….   https://komonews.com/news/local/portland-mayor-decries-violent-protesters-as-props-for-trump

Just in case you’re wondering about that city, it’s not going well at all.  https://katu.com/news/local/police-declare-riot-arrest-16-in-north-portland

I checked the calendar again, just to be sure: Nope, there’s no Friday the 13^th this month, not last week, not this morning, not next week.  But it’s easy enough to follow the events in any city now, just type in the local TV station’s online broadcast, and WGNTV is always on the air with something. The fact that I left that city nearly two decades ago doesn’t mean I don’t keep track. I might want to go to the library down there some day, or the Art Institute, but that all requires a whole day’s worth of travel to get there, pay the visit, travel from there, and pay for meals that are extremely overpriced, never mind the cost of parking in the Loop, or the cost of train fare to and from and parking at the train station where you embark on that trip, plus cab fare to wherever you’re going.

So when tuning into the Chitown news early this morning, it was kind of a jolt to see something about Chicago being looted and vandalized overnight. I did stick with it, watched the stringer videos sent to the TV station showing people breaking glass and looting stores all over again for no good reason.

And when Mayor Lightfoot started her press conference, she was visibly pissed off.  Likewise, the new Chief of Police had a few things to say about how obvious it was that when something starts at 87th & the Dan Ryan and then moves north in squads and large groups, and cars are waiting outside while Loop stores are broken into, property including cash registers stolen, and the thieves run out the doors in groups to waiting cars, it isn’t about First Amendment stuff at all. It’s just criminal behavior.

The police chief was visibly angry about it. And both he and the mayor referred several times to IL AG Kimm Fox, the brilliant bulb who decided that Jussie Smollet wasn’t really grandstanding for attention, and also reduced or dropped charges against southsiders from the ‘hoods and let them off with a scolding back in June.

https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/widespread-damage-reported-in-downtown-chicago-after-night-of-looting/

It appears that the difference between Chitown and Portland is that Portland’s idjit maire is one of those enablers who thought that Stalin or Hitler were okay until those malevolent creatures turned on them.

And Lightfoot is just the opposite.  She’s a control freak, yes, but it seems that she takes her job seriously because she was not looking at all pleased about having to go eyeball-to-eyeball with AG Foxx about this before long, never mind take questions from reporters and tell them “Don’t bait me”. She seems to have an unforeseen mean streak in her, which I hope she puts to good use. There’s too much footage sent to the TV stations by stringers in apartments overlooking the streets of the city, and from the TV stations themselves, for these slovenly jackasses doing the looting and pillaging to be able to say “It was cold and snowing and i needed a new coat for winter, ” all while they’re hopping into getaway cars waiting for them.

If these +/- 100 clowns who were arrested get booked, jailed, tried and convicted, I will likely find some respect for Lightfoot. There’s no excuse for  allowing anyone busted by the cops for these crimes of theft and vandalism to get off with a slap on the wrist, and say it’s all about 1st Amendment stuff, when it is no such thing.

But there is nothing available from me at all for the quisling mayor of Portland.  He’s a whiny little snot whose idea of a “listening session” with the rioters backfired on him because they decided to go set fire to his police station.

The story isn’t over yet. There are other cities going through the same grinding issues. Chicago is my kind of town. Lived and worked there for a very long time, but at this point, not sorry that I left when I did.

And we know there is far more to come on this, especially with elections coming up in a few weeks.  That could turn into another riot fest.  Secret ballot? Heh – yeah, with the Post Office going broke and not allowing overtime and the mail delivery peeps running out of emotional gas with the overload, how does anyone really expect a proper ballot count to be tallied?  Hmmm? Remember those recounts from last time, when some previously uncounted votes for Trump were discovered in Michigan and the recount there was brought to a halt because of it?  And those boxes of ballots found in someone’s car trunk?  Oh, I sure do count the mail-in ballot as one of my favorite things, I do. There’s no dishonesty in the tallying process, none at all. Never has been.

That aphorism “…. may you live in interesting times” is right in our laps.

Looking forward to it.

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work"