GO, PLEASE GO – AT 12:20 P.M. ET:   One of the great human qualities is knowing when to get off the stage.   Most people in public life don't possess it.  One who doesn't even know it exists is Jesse Jackson, a man whose very face reads OBSOLETE.  Jackson is pathetic.  He's half a century out of date, spouting the exact same rhetoric he used in the sixties, and no one will tell him.  What is worse, his constituency still believes him.

He was on TV to discuss gun violence in Chicago.  What a sad spectacle:

Rev. Jesse Jackson appeared on CNN on Friday where he was pressed to defend Chicago’s strict gun control laws following the city’s 500th homicide, 87.5 percent of which are gun-related, this year. Jackson said that Chicago, unlike Newtown, has no gun culture – Newtown, Connecticut, having several gun ranges whereas Chicago has none. He also said that the pressing issues of poverty, unemployment and the lack of a sense of mobility in America’s urban centers are the root causes of gun violence.

Whaa?  No gun culture in Chicago?  The man is daffy.  And the root causes of gun violence?  Why, it's the same sixties list.  Notice that Jackson doesn't blame the guys who pull the trigger.  And he doesn't mention fatherlessness, the unspoken issue.

“40 percent unemployment does matter,” Jackson continued. “Lack of education does matter.” He said that gun crime and joblessness are inextricably linked.

In fact, violent crime went down during the Great Depression.  And the murder rate in New York is a third that of Chicago.  And lack of education?  You mean there are no opportunities for urban "youths"?  There are plenty, when they bother to attend school.

Oh, notice that Jackson doesn't mention parenting either.

Jackson was asked again, given Chicago’s gun violence in spite of its strict gun laws, how even stricter gun laws can be justified.

“The guns are not coming from Chicago,” Jackson replied. “Chicago is in a bubble as the manufacturer — we’re a target market for gun flow. And they exploit the poverty and the pain.”

Same old stuff.  It's the gun manufacturers. 

“It’s not gun violence. It’s also poverty and lack of education and lack of dreams, where people think killing is the only way out,” Jackson concluded. “This is the need for an urban policy of reconstruction.”

They think killing is the only way out?  Aren't there any leaders in the "community" to set them straight, or are the "leaders" too busy getting their slice of the pie?

Retirement home.  Fast.  Send an ambulance.

December 30, 2012