Quagmire in Chicago: More Killed in America's Second Largest City Than in Iraq This Weekend

I guess Barack Obama and all his radical buddies didn't do such a hot job organizing their communities.

For several years, every instance of violence in a war zone like Iraq has been magnified and promoted through several news cycles.

Yet what is commonplace in American cities goes largely unnoticed. When it is noticed, we usually get mealy-mouthed excuses blaming society or guns, as if inanimate objects load themselves and seek out victims.

So I ask, why aren't we seeing stories calling the out-of-control violence in Chicago a quagmire?

Shouldn't the man who promises healing and unity help get his own backyard in order before bringing us all together?

It would really be a change if we didn't see a body count every weekend in the Windy City.

In the meantime, this is one of the few stories you can find about violence in Iraq. There would probably be more coverage except the media has fled Iraq now that there's primarily only good news to report. Democrats sure as hell don't want to talk about it.

I'm sure if they could find a way to pin violence in Chicago on George W. Bush they'd gladly do so. But the dirty little fact nobody ever wants to mention is the crime and murder rates in Democrat-controlled cities.

How convenient.

Update: Larwyn sends along this item out of Baltimore. Sounds like things are even worse there. Maybe when The Messiah pulls our forces out of Iraq he can redeploy them to all the American cities run by Democrats. Increase the Peace!

A wave of violence rocked Baltimore this weekend with nine shootings in one five hour span. Mike Hellgren reports on the new push for peace, unveiled as these shooting investigations unfolded on city streets.

The scenes are all too familiar--crime tape, police, bloodshed--after a series of unrelated shootings these weekend.

It's heartbreaking for the Reverend Wanda Bynum-Duckett. Her church is in a southwest Baltimore neighborhood targeted by a new anti-violence effort, but she's keeping faith.

"It kind of inspires you to move on in the face of that, because you can't give up because of that. It makes you just want to work even harder," she said. "It's a life and death health issue. It's an epidemic."

Just hours before the wave of shootings, city leaders launched Project Safe Streets, which does tackle crime as a health issue. It aims to change a culture of violence by making retaliation as socially unacceptable as smoking or not wearing a seatbelt.

"We need to use peaceful methods to achieve an enduring peace," Mayor Sheila Dixon said.

"They want change but they don't know where to start, so it takes guys like us who've been there," said Donte Barksdale, an outreach worker.

The program is successful in Chicago where, in the first four years after it launched, shootings were down 40%.

It worked in Chicago? Really?