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Chicago has recorded an all-time record for death due to gun violence for 2016, in addition to an all-time record for gun violence.

This, despite being a Democrat-run city with liberal views on guns, social engineering and, oh yes, sanctuary city status.......

Proof is in the pudding folks....... time to grow-up.

Chicago records 762 homicides in 2016, up 57 percent from previous year

The city of Chicago recorded 762 homicides in 2016 — an average of two murders per day, the most killings in the city for two decades and more than New York and Los Angeles combined.

The nation's third largest city also saw 1,100 more shooting incidents than it did in 2015, according to statistics released by the Chicago Police Department that underlined a story of bloodshed that has put Chicago at the center of a national dialogue about gun violence.

The numbers released Sunday are staggering, even for those following the steady news accounts of weekends ending with dozens of shootings and monthly death tolls that hadn't been seen in years. The increase in 2016 homicides compared to 2015, when 485 were reported, is the largest spike in 60 years.

Police and city officials have lamented the flood of illegal guns into the city, and the crime statistics appeared to support their claims: Police recovered 8,300 illegal guns in 2015, a 20 percent from the previous year.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said during a news conference Sunday that Chicago is among many U.S. cities that have seek a spike in violence, including in attacks on police. He said anger at police, including in the wake of video released that showed a white Chicago officer shooting a black teenager 16 times, has left criminals "emboldened" to violent crimes.

He also said it's becoming clearer to criminals that they have little to fear from the criminal justice system.

"In Chicago, we just don't have a deterrent to pick up a gun," he said. "Any time a guy stealing a loaf of bread spends more time pre-trial in jail than a gun offender, something is wrong."

The bulk of the deaths and shooting incidents, which jumped from 2,426 in 2015 to 3,550 last year, occurred in only five neighborhoods on the city's South and West sides, all poor and predominantly black areas where gangs are most active. Police said the shootings in those areas generally wasn't random, with more than 80 percent of the victims having previously been identified by police as more susceptible because of their gang ties or past arrests.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson was expected to discuss the newly released statistics Sunday afternoon.

The city has scrambled to address the violence. Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced last year that 1,000 officers would be added to the police department. At the same time, police officials have been trying to figure out why homicides and shootings -- which began climbing the year before -- suddenly surged.

Johnson has said several factors contributed to the increased violence. He noted 2016 was the first full year since the city was forced in November 2015 to release video of the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was black and shot 16 times by a white police officer. The video cost former Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy his job, sparked major protests around the city, and led to federal and state investigations of the department.


It also left Johnson with the task of trying to restore public trust in what appeared to be a weakened police force, a perception that was only buttressed by a dramatic drop in the number of arrests in 2016.

While the police department has cited several factors for the declining numbers, including a concerted effort not to make minor drug arrests and focus on gun violence, Johnson acknowledged in a recent interview with The Associated Press that officers have become more cautious -- in part out of fear of becoming the next "viral video."

That, he said, has "emboldened" criminals.

"Criminals watch TV, pay attention to the media," he said. "They see an opportunity to commit nefarious activity.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/01/01/1- ... cides.html

To put things into perspective, an article fro 2012 concerning Chicago's gun violence then, and how the city's hands-off policies have increased the likelihood of violence. Since then, it's only gotten worse.......

Snippet:

Chicago: Sanctuary City, Murder Capital

On July 7, 2012, the Democrat mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, announced a “Welcome to Chicago Ordinance” establishing the Windy City as a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. Chicago thus joined some 60 localities across the United States that currently choose not to enforce the federal rule of law on deportation of illegal aliens.

Emanuel formerly served as White House Chief of Staff in the Obama administration, which condones sanctuary cities. Such municipalities ignore U.S. immigration law that makes it a crime to enter the United States without documentation. Emanuel thus set the tone of his administration by condoning immigration law breakers.

What followed is a crime wave in Chicago so severe that voices of reason suggest the new mayor may not be up to the job. In August 2012, The Chicago Tribune reported that Emanuel had called for the assistance of federal law enforcement. President Obama (once a Chicago community organizer) responded with 50 federal agents. Their assignment is to reign in the shootings and killings by crime gangs that are tying Chicago in knots.

Since Chicago is a sanctuary city, law enforcement officers, including the “feds”, cannot question criminals about their citizenship. By failing to detain illegal alien gang members for deportation, these federal agents find themselves complicit in violating U.S. immigration law — at the behest of the Obama administration.

The current code word for Chicago’s daily shootings and killings is not “murder” but “violence.” No mention is made by the mayor that the gangs committing the “violence” are Hispanic and include large numbers of illegal aliens. Chicago now ranks above Montgomery County, Md., and Los Angeles both with sanctuary designations, as home to the nation’s most vicious illegal alien criminal gangs.

The exact number of gang members in Chicago is guesswork but ranges from 68,000 to 150,000 members in 70 to 100 gangs. Politicians and social justice activists do not acknowledge that the vast majority of gang members are illegal aliens. As a result, Chicago, with its large Hispanic gang presence, provides safe havens to criminals and dangerous crime zones to law-abiding citizens.

Although law enforcement officials estimate that the Latin Kings are the largest crime gang in Chicago, other observers believe MS-13 or Surenos (Mexican Mafia gang) or Barrio 18 may have the most gang members. The city also has black crime gangs, whose power is being diminished by the sheer number of Hispanic gang members. The black gangs, with a majority of their members U.S. citizens, appear to be joining forces to combat the Hispanic gangs.

With shootings a daily experience, Chicago has become the murder capital of America. On September 30, 2012, the Chicago Sun Times reported that, thus far this year, the city had 395 killings and 2,090 woundings, including70 stabbings; and this may be a lowball count. In one recent weekend, the city had five killings and 30 woundings. Many of the victims were innocent bystander adults and children.

No one knows how to stop the “violence”, not the Chicago Crime Commission; Chicago Justice Project; Chicago Police Department; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA); Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives (ATF); social-justice nuns; and especially not the Obama administration.

http://www.newsmax.com/JamesWalsh/Chica ... id/458886/

Just heard this news story this morning (what a way to wake-up.........)

Snippet:
University of Wisconsin Course Examines Negative Effects of Masculinity
The program centers on the premise that masculinity is primarily a societal construct rather than an intrinsic biological reality. Based on this premise, radical gender theorists argue that masculinity has a toxic influence on society.

The “Men’s Project” is a six-week program for male students that asks participants to reflect on the negative effects of the expectation to be masculine. A news release from the University of Wisconsin material claims that one of the goals is to “prevent future violence” from male students.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/01/0 ... sculinity/

Guys - were all "a social construct". Obama has spoken, and now the word according to Obama is being disseminated to the students. Yay.........

Oh, this gets ever better. Imagine if the politicians had referenced THIS:

Is PMS a social construct?

One day, while I was researching my recent book about cultural syndromes across the world, I was talking to my wife when she said: "Well, I got my period. I guess that explains my mood."

I shrugged and asked: "Or does it?"

This was followed by an icy silence: The only thing worse than diagnosing PMS is suggesting it might be a cultural syndrome.

"Never mind," I said. "We'll go with, 'It does.' "

I couldn't blame her. After all, most people assume that when you say a condition is caused (even partly) by your culture, it's the same as saying it's not real. Yet that's not what I was saying at all.

For the past few years, I had been digging into the phenomenon of so-called culture-bound syndromes, which more recently have come to be known as "cultural syndromes," or sometimes, "cultural idioms of distress." It was a path I started down when I traveled to Nigeria to investigate magical penis theft, in which a person believes his (or sometimes her) genitals to have been stolen via magic. This is known in the medical literatures as koro, or "genital retraction syndrome," and versions of it have been recorded, among other places, in China, Thailand and India.

Trying to understand koro, in turn, led me into a labyrinth of other syndromes, many of which seem unreal to Westerners, though not to those experiencing them. People have "wind attacks" in Cambodia, where the flow of wind through the body reverses or is blocked, causing dizziness, shortness of breath, numbness and fever. In China, some people suffer from "frigophobia," or the "morbid fear of cold ... and the need to wear excessive clothing." In parts of India, you can contract "gilhari syndrome," in which patients arrive at the hospital with swelling on the back of their necks, complaining that a gilhari (a kind of lizard) crawled under their skin and feeling terrified that they will die if the creature reaches the neck.

Eventually, this path led me back to my own culture, and to our own syndromes that don't occur in other cultures. Premenstrual syndrome was near the top of this list. And much of what I read suggested that PMS was not caused by a tide of hormones wreaking havoc on a woman's psyche, as I'd always believed. In 1987, Thomas Johnson published an article in the journal Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry arguing that premenstrual syndrome was a "culture-specific disorder," noting that:

"Even though there are those who strive to find congruence between bizarre symptom complexes [i.e. the culture-bound syndromes] in other cultures and Western biomedical disease entities, there has been an implication that such syndromes are 'not real.' Yet we unquestioningly treat our own problematic syndromes, such as PMS, as 'real,' striving constantly to find physiological correlates of symptoms. On the one hand, we assume the causes of PMS are purely biological, despite not having found the mechanisms. And on the other we assume the causes of 'cultural syndromes' are entirely mental, despite the fact that one's beliefs and expectations about a condition can generate many of the same physical symptoms."

Others have elaborated on PMS' problematic nature as an evidence-based biological condition. Researchers Lisa Cosgrove and Bethany Riddle found that women who endorsed traditional gender roles experienced more menstrual distress. "One of the most striking results," they wrote, "was that PMS discourse has gained such cultural currency that women often expect to have PMS." Another study found that patients "firmly believed that PMS is biologically based, and they rejected situational attributions for their distress." In another experiment, women who were misled to believe they were premenstrual experienced more symptoms of PMS than those who were actually premenstrual but who were misled to believe they were not.

The subtext of these critiques is that PMS is "socially constructed," meaning it's an imaginary condition foisted on women by society, which is another way of saying PMS is "not real."
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comme ... -construct

Interesting piece on the subject of "social constructs":

Walter Williams: Liberal struggle against reality

We will never understand liberals and progressives until we recognize that they often see reality as a social construct subject to being challenged and changed.

For example, throughout the world, boys and girls have different toy preferences. Typically, boys like to play with cars and trucks, whereas girls prefer dolls. Liberals explain this with the assertion that boys and girls are socialized and encouraged to play with different types of toys by their parents, peers, and “society.”

Growing scientific evidence suggests that toy preferences have a biological origin. Even studies of male and female primates find that they exhibit similar toy preferences. Despite the growing evidence of biological determinism, liberals have managed to intimidate toy sellers into getting rid of the labels “toys for boys” and “toys for girls.”

Another reality issue that’s extremely annoying to liberals and progressives is chromosomal sex determination. The XX/XY sex determination system is found in humans. Females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX), whereas males have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY).

This chromosomal reality is seen as limiting, annoying and an artifact of a patriarchal, chauvinistic society. So liberals and progressives want to change it. Say you are an XY (male) individual but would like to conduct your affairs in a facility designated for XX (female) individuals, such as a ladies’ room. You can satisfy your desire by claiming that you are transgender — that is, you’ve switched from one gender to another.

Therefore, if one has XY chromosomes, he can behave as if he were an XXer. Plus, there is the expectation of being addressed according to one’s chosen gender. The Minneapolis Police Department has a new rule that requires officers to address transgender people using their preferred names and pronouns. When an XYer is arrested but claims he is a woman, I wonder whether the police will place him in a cell with XXers. Just how far the Minneapolis authorities will go is in question; maybe they, too, believe that reality is optional.

Another part of reality that liberals and progressives find difficult to accept is the fact that equality among humans is the exception and inequality the norm. If one were to list the world’s top 30 violinists of the 20th century, at least 20 of them would be of Jewish ancestry. Jews constitute no more than 3 percent of the U.S. population but 35 percent of American Nobel Prize winners. One wonders what liberals would propose to promote equality in violin excellence and winning a Nobel Prize. By the way, liberals and progressives love to attend classical concerts, where there is a virtual absence of racial diversity.

http://www.winchesterstar.com/opinions/ ... 3a6d6.html

All this is pretty DISGUSTING , isn't it Kbot? These people have set back TRUE science, back to the "Dark Ages". The thing is I tend to believe that THEY believe there own BS. The Young and the Ignorant eat this stuff up like candy. SAD

Well, in a way, what is ironic is that liberals will criticize conservatives over religious views. What is being displayed here is a new type of religion. Don't know what you cal it, but, it is a religion nonetheless. That it is "their own" makes it OK.

Here's another, this time from Stanford. This is different than what Obama said in his Atlantic interview where race and gender identity was being used as an outcome of "how do I feel", but it's something how the concept is being spread through the higher education system

Snippet:

Stanford experts highlight link between language and race in new book

Anthropologist Samy Alim argues that the relationship between race, language and racism plays such a key role in reflecting and defining the way human societies are structured that it deserves study as a separate field, which he calls raciolinguistics.

Alim examines the connection between language, race and power in a new book, co-edited with John Rickford and Arnetha Ball. The book, Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race, compiles recent scholarly research on different societies around the world.

Stanford News Service interviewed Alim, the book’s lead editor and director of the Center for Race, Ethnicity and Language, about the emerging field of raciolinguistics and his research.

You say that today more than ever, American society is hyperracial and hyperracializing. What do you mean by that and why do you think that is so?

I studied Barack Obama’s speech patterns and I’ve found that his speech changed depending on his audience. Because of prevailing racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic ideas about who he was, he had to speak in such a way that made as many people comfortable with him as possible.

Obama used a “black preacher style” to appeal to the African American community, linking himself to familiar black figures like Martin Luther King Jr. At the same time, he used “standard” English when he talked to more general audiences. But his “black preacher style” was not only important for the black electorate; he also alleviated some white American fears that he was “not American” and “not Christian.” He was caught between discriminatory discourses of race, language, citizenship and religion, and he needed to navigate between them in order to not be seen as “the African, Muslim boogeyman” that the far right made him out to be. Language and race work together here in very important ways.

I argue that Obama’s ability to switch between different linguistic varieties has been an advantage in his political career. His speech can be seen as an example of transgressive, transracial politics.

What do you believe is the biggest takeaway from the research compiled in this book?

As leading scholars argue in the book, language is often overlooked as one of the most important cultural means that we have for distinguishing ourselves from others. But rather than being fixed and predetermined, we argue that racial identities can shift across contexts and even in moment-to-moment interactions.

We use the knowledge gained from our studies to argue for a new kind of politics – a transgressive, transracial politics – that considers both the powerful ways that race is taken up by people of color in contexts of racial inequality and the ways that we challenge the very process of racial categorization itself. Race is both a social construct and an important social reality. So how do we develop a new politics around that in this current moment?
http://news.stanford.edu/2016/12/27/lin ... -new-book/

A killing in Chicago's Douglas Park neighborhood was the only fatality among 29 people shot from Saturday to Sunday morning. Of the people shot, three were teenagers — ages 14, 15 and 17.

Several of the attacks also injured multiple victims as gunmen opened fire on groups of people. Two shootings that occurred in the Chatham and Back of the Yards neighborhoods each injured three people.

The man killed was shot in the head and back and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. His age was not immediately available. In the same shooting, a 19-year-old man was shot in the hand and also taken to Mount Sinai, where his condition was stabilized.

FULL STORY

When certain groups, welcome known terrorists & murderers into society, I am hard pressed to know just Who the real "Terrorists" are?

When we loose our own "self preservation" instincts in favor of faux compassion, just how screwed up is that?

Doka wrote: ↑07-30-2017 11:03 AM When certain groups, welcome known terrorists & murderers into society, I am hard pressed to know just Who the real "Terrorists" are?

When we loose our own "self preservation" instincts in favor of faux compassion, just how screwed up is that?

What Is Antifi?
https://youtu.be/td-lor1xQ3I

Doka wrote: ↑08-17-2017 10:39 PM
What Is Antifi?
https://youtu.be/td-lor1xQ3I

They are a scary group of people Doka. Hardly idealists.........

It was bad enough when enlightened educators turned childhood relationships upside down with their attack on “stereotypes.” Indeed, boys cannot be boys with other boys anymore. The boy stereotype is too aggressive and assertive for a snowflake world. Girls also cannot be girls with other girls anymore. The girl stereotype is considered too subdued.

Children are further encouraged to break free from any pre-established order. They can now self-identify and fantasize as any real or imagined pronoun. At precisely the time when children are seeking certainties, they are taught there are none.

Best friends and bosom buddies are now targets. Such policies ignore the fact that in the search for affection and validation, the child needs strong peer friendships that extend beyond the family.

Intimate friends are needed to help children confide in others. Best friends build self-esteem and certainties; they do not harm development.

However, the equality police have now decreed that all bonds be made equal. The more progressive schools with no-best-friend policies seek to avoid feelings of exclusion. Ironically, such policies have emerged in very exclusive schools.

These educators argue that larger friend groups avoid negative feelings associated with the perception that one was left out. When every child is equally every other child’s friend, everyone supposedly feels equally happy. When a child celebrates a birthday, for example, he or she must invite everyone in the class or have no party at all.

Education becomes a matter of feelings and emotion. Everyone is encouraged to be artificially kind and inclusive. Any unequal treatment triggers feelings of resentment. This feel-good educational approach discourages preparation for dealing with the real world, which is not always kind and inclusive. It becomes the stage of a fantasy world that does not correspond to reality. No wonder college students now demand safe spaces and coloring books to cope with stressful university life.

This is a case of childhood’s end. Usually, the educational establishment has tightly controlled curricula or more general things involving childhood development. Control now extends to a child’s choice of friends. It becomes child abuse of the worst sort.

According to the bizarre leftist dogma, children must be free to express themselves differently as long as everyone is the same in the end. It is a cruel tyranny that spares not even those special and intimate relationships of the innocent child.

FULL STORY

Riddick wrote: ↑10-26-2017 01:10 AM According to the bizarre leftist dogma, children must be free to express themselves differently as long as everyone is the same in the end. It is a cruel tyranny that spares not even those special and intimate relationships of the innocent child.
FULL STORY

What kinda idiot thought-up this crap????