Saturday, February 23, 2013

Perspective

At least one anonymous leader of this blog thinks it poor sport of me to remind readers that the President of the United States is a Chicago politician. I could be a lot meaner than I've been, though -- behold the Onion:
CHICAGO—The city of Chicago is steadily recovering from an overnight snowstorm that delayed hundreds of murders on Friday morning and will likely continue to push numerous homicides across the city drastically behind schedule, public authorities announced. “As we speak, maintenance crews are working diligently to restore public transportation, de-ice roads, and clear back alleyways so that Chicagoans can quickly resume murdering again,” Department of Streets and Sanitation spokesman Dave Michelson said of the heavy blizzard, which caused numerous homicide cancellations this morning at peak murder times. 
It's satire, remember.

3 comments:

Gino said...

i remember back in the 80s, los angeles had a freakishly cold cold-snap lasting 4-5 nights.

a few days later, the papers were reporting (and police spokesman, as well) a near 100% drop in violent crime during this period.

i guess crips and bloods in CA dont own parkas.

First Ringer said...

I've had friends and family serve on the Minneapolis police force, and the one factor all of them have credited for our reasonable low crime rate is the weather.

I remember Rick Stanek, now the Hennepin County Sheriff, talking about how the late 1990s drop in crime (the end of the 'Murderapolis' era) happened. We had a brutal winter and much of the leadership of the major gangs/organized crime left to go back south. The locals they left in place to run the operations were incompetent by comparison and within another year, crime was down.

I have no idea if that's accurate, but it's interesting so many people in a position to know suggest that theory.

3john2 said...

I don't think it is entirely accurate to say Obama is a Chicago politician in so far as he was raised organically in that environment. He was drafted by the Chicago machine and plugged in. That doesn't mean he didn't learn its lessons and applications, of course.