Mix together a pummeling rainstorm and a 98 year old water line and you get a giant sinkhole. Recent rains in Chicago caused a 40 foot sinkhole to open on a residential street swallowing cars and injuring drivers. Watch the video to see a third car topple into the gaping hole.

Camera catches car falling into sinkhole

Read more at the Chicago Tribune.

It seems that Jesus Castaneda, who is fifteen years old, was arrested for the nineteenth time after yet another crime in (wait for it …) Chicago. Castaneda, who was known to Chicago police, is accused of using a gun to rob an acquaintance last weekend (February 2-3). The acquaintance knew Castaneda as “Little Rowdy.”

What is (IMHO) even more outrageous is that Cook County judge Maria Kuriakos-Ciesil set bail on Thursday at $25,000. Why, one must ask, was bail even discussed, much less set? And if Castaneda makes it (some bleeding-heart will put up the $25,000), is there any doubt that he will commit another crime before his scheduled court appearance on February 27? The MSM was fooled. The Chicago police were fooled. Cook County judges were fooled. Rahm Emanuel was fooled. But, perhaps they were not fooled. They all chose to look the other way.

But have no fear – Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has crime under control. How do I know?

• B. Christopher Agee, in his excellent CDN article, let’s us know the current crime situation in Chicago: “According to the [Chicago police] department, crime scenes at which a suspect is “not on the scene and not expected to return immediately” and the victim is “safe, secure and not in need of medical attention” will no longer get a police visit.”
• Agee continues, “Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said he wants to put more officers on patrol rather than send them to crime scenes.” I’m sure that McCarthy’s policies will comfort all the victims of Castaneda’s crimes.
• Chicago Police arrested eight offenders … associated with an open-air drug market … after a two-month investigation. Oh, that explains Castaneda’s situation. It took Chicago police “only” two months to make arrests in an open-air drug market.
• Speaking of bleeding-hearts, here is an article by Angela Caputo that truly fits, that describes what is ongoing in Chicago: “Second City Ranks First in Teen Arrests”
• More youth killed in Chicago than any other American city.
• As of December 21, 2012, shootings in Chicago have increased 12 percent this year, and homicides are up 19 percent.
• Since Rahm Emanuel’s gun violence policies have worked so well (NOT!) in Chicago, the country’s murder capital, that may explain why he feels he has to lecture the rest of us on the best way to curb gun violence.

But not to worry. This arrest of Castaneda was only the second one that was gun-related. And, as Lisa Richards said in her CDN article, we all know how evil guns by themselves can be.

So, what’s next? Well, as long as Rahm Emanuel, Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama’s former chief-of-staff, remains Chicago’s mayor, nothing. As Robert Maranto and Patrick Wolf of The Huffington Post wrote, “In Police Work, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure.” The reason is that, “… there is no relationship between a police chief’s cutting crime and keeping his or her job.” As long as the MSM continues to provide cover, nothing will happen. All we can do is continue to ask: “How many times is enough?”

But that’s just my opinion.
Please visit RWNO, my personal web site.

Which brings one to three observations:

• Some receiving government assistance really do feel they are entitled and shouldn’t have to wait in lines.
• No matter where you go, there is always a phone ready to take pictures and capture the event in video for perpetuity.
• How does someone receiving food stamps afford a smart phone?

Read more at: CBS

But Obama did not address the murder rate in Chicago. As of mid-June, 2012, 228 Chicago citizens were killed. That’s more than soldiers killed in Afghanistan – 144 – during the same period. Further, since 2001, approximately 2,000 soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, while over 5,000 people have been killed in Chicago. And the death rate in Chicago is up 35 percent over the same period last year.

Chicago’s murder rate is currently four times the rate of New York City, and two times the murder rate in Los Angeles.

Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, former Obama White House chief of staff, could only warn street gangs. On July 9, 2012, on the CBS Evening News, Emanuel said, “Don’t come near the kids — don’t touch them.”

And Emanuel has asked the Illinois state legislature for a tougher law to curb their violence. Yeah, right. Murder is already against the law, so I’m sure gangbangers will abide by this new law and immediately stop the killings.

During the same July 9 interview with CBS’s Scott Pelley, Emanuel said, “But you have to be very aggressive in making sure that the gangbangers know that the police force and the community run those streets and they don’t.” Isn’t it rather ironic that Emanuel would say that when President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters Malia and Sasha, arrived in Chicago Friday evening ahead of the Saturday, June 16, 2012, wedding of Laura Jarrett, Emanuel had police on site to help “secure the perimeter” of the wedding. And Chicago will not be reimbursed for the police security by the federal government.

Emanuel pulls out all the stops when Obama comes to town, placing between 100 and 200 cops around Valerie Jarrett’s daughter’s wedding, but can’t seem to stop gangbanger killings of Chicago citizens. I guess George Orwell was correct when he said in Animal Farm that “… some animals are more equal than others.”

But that’s just my opinion.

Please visit RWNO, my personal web site.

Public Enemy #1…If You’re Liberal

I’m shocked at Chick-fil-A.  They advocate for a traditional family unit as described in the bible.  This is very controversial and marginalizing their bases of operation is critical in stopping bigotry and would be a critical victory for the gay rights movement.  That’s literally what liberals think about this whole kerfuffle surrounding what Dan Cathy, President and COO of Chick-fil-A, said about the company’s stance on gay marriage.  After a report was released by Equality Matters, a branch of the liberal Media Matters for America, the contents revealed that “Chick-fil-A donated more than $3 million between 2003 and 2009 to Christian groups that oppose homosexuality. In 2010 alone, the company gave nearly $2 million to such causes, according to the report.”  Wow.  People who are opposed to homosexuality and gay marriage.  I’m shocked. Yet, I’m not convinced that Dan Cathy said anything that could be classified as anti-gay.

As reported in the LA Times:

Chick-fil-A is very much supportive of the family, according to Dan Cathy, president of the popular fast food chain. That is, the biblical definition of the family unit, he said. And that doesn’t include Adam and Steve, suggests Cathy, whose father S. Truett Cathy founded the Atlanta-based company. In a new interview with Baptist Press, Cathy puts on the record what critics say his company’s actions have indicated for years. Well, guilty as charged, he said in the interview when asked about Chick-fil-A’s backing of families led by a man and a woman. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives,” Cathy said. The chain, according to the report, has 1,608 restaurants, sales of more than $4 billion and employees who are trained to focus on values rooted in the Bible. Chick-fil-A’s across the country shut down on Sundays. We don’t claim to be a Christian business,” Cathy said. But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles.

I didn’t hear any epithets or anti-gay rehtoric.  All I heard was that Mr. Cathy and the company he works for doesn’t support gay marriage.  There is a difference.

Well, this has set off the biggest left wing overreaction  that I haven’t seen in a long time and it’s downright hilarious as it is disturbing. Apparently, Big Bird lobbied heavily to get The Muppets to cut ties with the company and donate all their proceeds to GLAAD.  It’s sad to see a great cornerstone in children’s entertainment become so easily swayed by the nonsense spewed by left wing activists.  They’ve whored themselves out to the radical left and I blame Swedish Chef for not being vocal enough in stopping this inane move by the Jim Henson Company. I personally feel that Mr. Snaffalupagus should have curb stomped Bird Bird.  We all know he was a closet liberal.

It’s all your fault!

However, more politicians are getting their panties in a bunch over this.  As Chicago is drowning in its own blood, Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided to put a hold on everything and declare war on chicken sandwiches. In fact, “he said the comments disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents, and therefore building the restaurant in Chicago would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”  Have you had their sandwiches Mr. Mayor? They’re F-ing delicious!

In Boston, which is known for their tolerance since the city desegregated their schools in the 1970s, Mayor Menino “sent a letter to Chick-Fil-A’s President Dan Cathy. In the letter Menino calls out Cathy for his  prejudiced statements against same-sex marriage and said that having a branch of the restaurant chain across from City Hall would be an insult.”

Menino got the Human Rights Campaign slobbering all over him in their statement:

We applaud Mayor Menino for calling out Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBT practices. We have been asking people to make their own decisions about whether to continue supporting Chick-fil-A based on the facts available, and Mayor Menino has done just that. Mayor Menino’s rebuke of Chick-fil-A sends a strong messages that their habit of supporting hateful organizations that demonize LGBT Americans are out-of-step with not just Bostonians, but the majority of fair-minded Americans. Chick-fil-A is on the wrong side of history, and we look forward to seeing more and more elected officials and businesses speak out against their discriminatory practices.

So will HRC condemn Mayor Emanuel’s public embrace of Louis Farrakahn? As Kyle Becker of the Independent Journal posted today:

The Weekly Standard reports, Farrakhan was careful to couch his opposition to gay marriage as ‘not homophobic’:

Males coming to males with lust in their hearts as they should to a female,” he said. “Now don’t you dare say Farrakhan was preaching hate; he’s homophobic. I’m not afraid of my brothers and sisters or others who may be practicing what God condemned in the days of Lot. That’s not our job to be hateful of our people. Our job is to call us to sanity.”

Farrakhan goes on to call out clergy who support gay marriage, saying they are placing society’s needs over God’s.

“Is this the book that you believe in, but now you(‘re) backing down from an aspect of it because people will get offended?” he asked.”

Nothing Mr. Cathy said was anti-gay.  Again, he’s for traditional marriage, which half the country supports.  It’s not controversial.  Some people are simply against gay marriage and the Left needs to get over it.  However, I’m glad to see that some liberals are noticing that this isn’t the right battle.  Adam Serwer of Mother Jones stated:

Menino and Moreno have it wrong. Blocking construction of Chick-fil-a restaurants over Cathy’s views is a violation of Cathy’s First Amendment rights. Boston and Chicago have no more right to stop construction of Chick-fil-As based on an executive’s anti-gay views than New York City would have had the right to block construction of an Islamic community center blocks away from Ground Zero. The government blocking a business from opening based on the owner’s political views is a clear threat to everyone’s freedom of speech—being unpopular doesn’t mean you don’t have rights.

While we may disagree concerning the Ground Zero Mosque, Serwer hits it on the head concerning the threat this could pose to our  First Amendment rights.  It’s also anti-capitalist.  This Chick-Fil-A “controversy” is a convenient smoke screen initiated by the left to hide the president’s record since they’re running out of excuses.  While I plan to attend National Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day on August 1st, I will take pleasure as I sink my teeth into that chicken sandwich that the Olympics will overshadow this trivial episode in American politics.

This  AlJazeera video clip was shared on NewsNinja2012.com. Filmed in Obama’s back yard it seems there may be many who choose not to vote this election due to disappointment and lack of promises fulfilled.

CHICAGO, May 18, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/

ATF deployed several highly-trained special agents, paired with explosives detection canines, to assist in securing the facilities for the summit talks and events. ATF’s K-9 teams are working side-by-side with other federal, state and local law enforcement officers to keep the diplomats and others attending the summit safe throughout the event.

“The Explosives Detection Canine teams traveling to Chicago for the NATO Summit are the best of the best,” said Andy Traver, Special Agent in Charge of the ATF Chicago Field Division.  “These handlers and their K-9 partners train and prepare all year for an event such as this. Our K-9 teams are here to ensure that all the visitors arriving for the summit are safe.”

The ATF K-9 teams are from Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey and Texas.

ATF has used its explosives detection canines at other special events including Republican and Democratic National Conventions, Presidential Inaugurations, G-8 Summit meetings, World Series, NASCAR events, 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and Super Bowls.

ATF’s program, which began in 1986, uses only Labrador retrievers.  The dogs are supplied by the Guiding Eyes for the Blind, the Guide Dog Foundation, and Canine Companions for Independence.  These specialty canines attend a 10-week training program with their handlers that are conducted at the ATF Canine Training Center in Fort Royal, Va.  Upon completion of this course, the canines are trained to detect a variety of explosive compounds and materials that could be used in an explosive device.  The canines can also detect firearms and ammunition and are used in the more traditional protective search and sweep operations.   The teams train on a daily basis.

**UPDATE**

The results for Tuesday night’s primary are in, and as you can see by this screenshot (of the same ABC website mentioned above), the final tally did not match the premature results which were posted on Monday night.

Several people have said that the premature results were most likely posted as a “test”, but it still seems odd that they would go live on the ABC affiliate’s official website.

In the audience as an honored guest was controversial Cathaolic priest and Chicago community activist Father Michael Pfleger. It’s hard to say which of the two is the worst media whore.  Father Pfleger has publicly flouted the rules of his diocese for years in the Chicago area and has no shame in being a so-called representative of Jesus Christ (a Jew, by the way) while  standing shoulder to shoulder with the one of the most blatantly anti-Semitic public figures in the country. Sounds like a real barn-burner of a celebration.

Perhaps Minister Farrakhan has been probed by aliens one too many times. In addition to his strange rantings in celebration of “Saviour’s Day”, he added that he believes certain elements in the government will try to set up a Muslim “patsy” to take the fall for Obama’s assassination.  Says Farrakhan, “I believe they want a Muslim to kill President Obama.”

You can see a full write-up and video of the speech at the Chicago Tribune.

Crossposted at kiradavis.net

Babies cry. Water is wet. If you jump off a building you’ll always go down, never up.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

When you lie down with dogs, or #OWS protesters, you get fleas.

Sometimes dogs get tired of the hand that once fed them throwing them under the bus, and unable to patiently wait until the big dog is out of the White House (yeah, I went there) they begin to bite the hand by letting some of the factoids they had agreed (tacitly or explicitly) to keep on the Down Low slip out. [I keed, I keed]

As a bonus you get a surreptitious birds eye view of what these people have in store for your kids educational future.

To be fair it looks as if the Unrepentant Terrorist Bill Ayers was unaware that he was being taped…boo hoo. I’m pretty sure SFPD Sgt. Brian McDonnell was unaware Ayers’ Weather Underground Terrorists were going to kill him one day in February 1970.

But that sort of thing didn’t concern young Barack Obama. Like the #PeePeeParty aka #OWS one can safely assume that he sympathized with the aims if not the methods of the Weather Underground otherwise he would keep his distance from an Unrepentant Terrorist rather than hold a fundraiser in his living room.

Of course, by that logic he wouldn’t have associated with and participated in a highly questionable land deal with the likes of Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko who just got Ten and a half years for corruption and was sentenced wearing a prison jumpsuit and leg irons.

Should I toss in Blago? Or my personal fave Billionaire Former New Jersey Democrat Senator and Governor, Former Goldman Sachs CEO and Currently Under Investigation (and probably Heavy Security) CEO of the defunct MF Global (was there ever a better named company?) which ‘lost’ a reported $600 Million of Customer Funds that was ‘apparently’ commingled with the companies funds (highly illegal) but was then found to be actually $1.2 Billion.

When you’re a High Rolling Democrat Politician that’s a ‘Rounding Error’.

Chicago firefighters and police are on the scene, but presently, there have been no evacuations at this time.

It is being reported that one baggage handler suffered facial injuries from the blast and is receiving medical care.

At this time, no flights have been affected.

Let’s start with checking out the head of the snake, so-to-speak, the original community-organizing  [group] that started it all, the Occupy Wall Street crowd shall we?  Both Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity sent reporters down to check out the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Red Eye’s Bill Shultz and Jesse Waters both reported that most of the protesters had no real definition of  just what exactly they were protesting, or even what they expected to accomplish with these protests. No revelation there, as this is a movement based on Marxist anti-capitalism rhetoric,  and the general Liberal ideology that the successful  working class people somehow owe these people a good portion of their hard-earned wealth. The problem is that these people are trying to play the victim card , yet they just can not come out and say we don’t want to work for a living like everyone else does, we want Congress to give us their money. That is right out of Barack Obama’s wealth redistribution agenda that he was caught red-handed stating to Joe the Plumber.

Bill Shulz sloshed right into the mosh-pit at Occupy Wall Street and came back with  some very hard-hitting truths about just who these people are and what they are [ trying ] to accomplish there. Shulz described them as ” people with absolutely no purpose or focus in life,” while adding that the smell of the place was equal parts patchouli, body odor, and urine.”  The Occupy Wall Street folks wanted some media exposure so check it out, thanks to OnyxBook.com:

Now let’s take a look at the “sister protests” out in Los Angeles. Excerpts from their supposed community organizing homepage:

That was August of 2001. Three weeks later, on September 11, the world changed forever, and so did I.

I was driving into Chicago from my home of Gary, IN (30 miles southeast). I was modeling at a trade show for printing presses. Yes, it was just as exciting as it sounds. I had been driving in silence for some reason for most of my trip, but as I crossed into the city limits I turned on the radio to Mancow Muller’s morning show, just in time to hear him say, “This is not an accident, ladies and gentleman. Mark my words, you will forever remember where you were on this day”. He was talking about the passenger jet that had just crashed into the World Trade Center. As Mancow rehashed the details, I dismissed his warnings as on overreaction – shock jock talk from the Chicago personality who was famous for his conspiracy theories. Then the second plane hit. Mancow told me, and the abject terror in his voice made me begin to scan the Chicago skyline in search of wayward planes ready to fly into the Sears Tower or the center of downtown. “We are under attack, folks. America is under attack” .  I’ve been a fan of Mancow for a long time. He has a big mouth and he tells a lot of stories. I was scared, but I still wasn’t sure how serious the whole situation really was.

I pulled into the convention center lot and headed straight for the bar of the attached hotel. I needed to find a TV screen. It was packed. Strangers stood shoulder to shoulder as they watched the horror unfold before their eyes. Some people were crying. I saw the burning towers, and suddenly realized the debris falling from windows nearly 100 stories high was not actually debris, but people. I wept too. A man whom I had seen at the trade show the day before caught my eye. He knew I was pregnant and he made room at his booth for me to sit. We watched in stunned silence together. We tried to make sense of the rumors that there were more planes in the air, missiles loaded with people and fuel, ready to kill. We saw the Pentagon burning. Then the first tower fell – oh, who among us could ever forget that image? I screamed out loud and turned to my companion “Are there people in there?” I cried. He looked at me sympathetically. It was such a foolish question, but he seemed to understand that I just couldn’t process what was happening. He nodded. By that point I’d had all I could take. I was watching people, Americans, die before my very eyes and there was not a damn thing I could do to help. I hugged my still flat tummy and prayed, “Lord, I’m so scared. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t understand what’s going on. But please, I just need to see this baby.”

September 11, 2001 – that was the first time I felt like a mother. I suddenly, shockingly understood what it felt like to be a parent; to have no other concern above protecting the life of my child; to have no other desire then to kiss and smell and hold the life that love had created; to be so desperate to shield my child from harm that I would do anything, ANYTHING to see my baby.

As American authorities slowly began to stabilize the crisis, many of us went back to work. The trade show was an international event, and for the buyers and marketers this was a terrible tragedy, but not an international one. I chose to stay and earn my day’s wage, but I stayed as close to the televisions as I could all day. My drive home that evening was lonely. It was the tail end of the typical rush hour but the famously congested Dan Ryan Expressway was nearly empty. I sailed home, and thankfully so. I needed to see my husband. I raced in the door and straight into his waiting arms. He hugged me tightly and told me he was so glad I was finally home. We were together, and that made things seem a little more tolerable for the moment. I thought about all the people all over America who were greeting each other the exact same way. Most of us were in no immediate danger and yet we all shared the same fear that day. It wasn’t just New York City and the capitol that had been attacked – America had been attacked, and we were all Americans; and we were all scared.  Suddenly, in just hours, there was no need more pressing then the need to hold who we loved – tightly.

It seems unreal that it was ten years ago. For me, the pain and the fear are still so very real.  My tears have not yet dried. I weep, still.

Mancow was right. We will all remember where we were on that horrifying morning. For many Americans, 9/11 represents the day when we were all briefly united on one accord, with one common concern and common cause. For others, 9/11 represents the day when America became more than just an idea to take for granted. For others still, it is the day when the people they loved most in the world left for work, but never returned home. For every American alive that day, it means something.

As for me, I’ll remember 9/11 as the day my whole world shifted. That is the day I experienced my first maternal pangs, the ones I had worried I would never possess. Among the wreckage and carnage and utter horror, this mother’s heart was finally born. And I will never forget that. I will never forget.

From the beginning of this Chicago-style drama Blago has said the truth has come out. Indeed it has!

Before entering the courtroom to hear the verdict in his retrial, Mr. Blagojevich said:

“My hands are shaking, my knees are weak, I can barely stand on my own two feet,” Blagojevich said as he left his house. “It’s in God’s hands, now.”

The former governor was found guilty on 17 of 20 charges in his corruption retrial.

It’s interesting that now Blago seems to trust that God will save him from the consequences of his actions. With the mountains of recorded evidence against him, you would think he would realize that it has all caught up to him. However, that does not seem to be the case. It appears that Mr. Blagojevic was legitimately amazed that he would be found guilty.

Upon hearing that he was found guilty, he turned in bewilderment to his attorney and asked, “What happened?’

Well, Blago, that’s what we here in America call Justice! It suits you well!

Now if that same justice could be served to all politicians who have done the same thing! The reality is it is most all of them in one way or another. Blago’s downfall is those recording! He got caught! He just didn’t expect that the jurors would look past his exceptionally coiffed locks and see to the heart of the matter. He broke the law. Now he must pay the price.

It’s a good day in America!

_________________________
Source:
NBC Chicago

Superintendent McCarthy gives us a shining example of pandering to a segment of society at the cost of the rest. in this video of him in a heavily-liberal, mainly-black church making a case for gun rights as a race issue.

Wandering around like a misplaced evangelist, Garry McCarthy also tried to implicate Sarah Palin in the inner-city mayhem. Recalling a situation in Newark, NJ where five people were shot, McCarthy said said he went home to relax and found “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” on the T.V.

“She was caribou hunting and talking about the right to bear arms. Why wasn’t she at the crime scene with me?”

To answer the obvious, no, she wasn’t. She also wasn’t shooting people in Newark. We can drive cars and people who drive cars kill other people. We can ride horses and some people die doing that. The idea that somehow a responsible gun owner is to blame or in any way related to the death of five people in New Jersey is ludicrous, intellectually dishonest and an obvious political ploy meant to garner the favor of the uninformed.

Sarah Palin does  not shoot black and brown children. In fact, in majority, white people aren’t the major offenders in black or brown homicide. Garry’s attempt to blame racism for the failure of the inner-city community to put good societal values in-place is a pandering, dishonest ploy to favor a liberal agenda. Using  reality show as the basis for his argument almost entirely proves the point.

Dave Copel produced research that illustrates the true problem: guns don’t kill people, people do:

For inner-city black teenagers, the homicide rate is astronomical. The huge rise in gun crime perpetrated by older urban teenagers has not been replicated in other areas. In the suburbs, where legal restrictions on guns are generally less severe, the mortality rate has stayed about the same.

That’s right, guns are not the problem. All other factors being equal, it’s the inner-city population that chooses to murder each other. The guns are simply the mode chosen. Would we outlaw bats, crowbars, bows, knives, cars? No, but if guns are no longer the problem, they will try to find the next thing to blame – but not if it means blaming the murderers themselves.