AND IN OLD CHICAGO – AT 8:57 A.M. ET:  We like to give you regular updates on news from the fighting fronts.  Here is a report from one of the most bitter of them all, from the Chicago Tribune:

Nineteen people were shot in attacks across the South and West sides between about 5:20 p.m. Thursday and 1:30 a.m. Friday - including 13 people during a single 30-minute period - according to the Chicago Police Department.

The shootings peaked between about 9:15 and 9:45 p.m. Thursday when 13 people were shot, including eight in a single incident at 79th Street and Essex Avenue about 9:30 p.m.

Police are still trying to sort out that shooting, the second of three incidents that left multiple people wounded since 8 p.m.

As of 4 a.m., none of the 19 people shot had died.

The first reported shooting Thursday afternoon left four people wounded in the Little Village neighborhood about 5:20 p.m.

Two more were wounded in the Ida B. Wells / Darrow Homes neighborhood about 8:10 p.m., police said. Two men – 27 and 33 – were shot in the 600 block of East 37th Street and taken to the University of Chicago Hospitals, Chicago Police News Affairs Officer Ron Gaines said. The younger man was shot in the head and the other in the right arm, Gaines said.

The eight people shot at 79th Street and Essex Avenue were wounded in a drive-by about 9:15 p.m., police said. The ages of the people shot ranged from 14 to 28. Seven were male.

COMMENT:  This is happening right now in the president's home city.  Is he interested?  Can the first lady spare a moment?  We'll be told of course that it's the fault of the gun manufacturers.  The Rev. Jackson will appear on CNN, as he did recently, and inform us that this is "happening everywhere," when in fact it isn't. 

It is not, for example, happening in New York, even though there's been a spike here.  And yet, incredibly, the Obama wing of the Democratic Party in New York, led by The New York Times, is at war against the very crime-fighting innovations that have made New York one of the safest cities in America.  It is part of the regressives' dream to bring the United States back to the sixties, the decade they loved.  High crime rates?  Hey, merely a socio-economic phenomenon of inner-city peoples.  (Do I have the lingo right?)

Chicago is an ongoing tragedy.  I suspect that, if you looked below the surface, you would find that a major part of the problem is the refusal of the Chicago political machine to interfere with the "turf" of local black leaders, who run their neighborhoods like personal feifdoms, and do nothing to take on the criminals.  In New York, Rudy Giuliani, one of the great public servants of our time, went over the heads of the "leaders" and introduced new police procedures that saved countless lives.  For that he was called a racist.

August 24, 2012