Curtis Dahlgren
More on that toddlin' town, "the town that Billy Sunday couldn't shut down."
By Curtis Dahlgren
"With the weekend not even half over, the city's toll from violence stood at nine dead and at least 36 wounded as of Friday afternoon."
GOD HELP US. We're not talking Cairo or Damascus here; we're talking CHICAGO, the hip modern urban secular society that LBJ planned 50 years ago. Don't you wish, some days, that you were a low-information voter?
These are not the days predicted by Zechariah regarding "cities full of boys and girls playing in the streets." Not exactly! In the Windy City, they're playing with guns.
"When the shots were fired, [the victim's mother] thought it was fireworks still going off. And there was a guy standing on the opposite side of the street, shooting into the park. He let off about 30 rounds." – Chicago Tribune (July 6), "A festive night out erupts in violence"
The woman's 5-year-old son was hit in the stomach and leg.
"Fearful that waiting for an ambulance would waste time, a friend drove her and her boy to a nearby hopital. Jaden was transferred to Advocate Christ, where doctors removed his kidney, spleen, and pancreas . . . Friday, the boy remained on life support."
IF THE PRESIDENT HAD A SON, HE MAY HAVE LOOKED LIKE JADEN.
I hate paying $3.50 for a Sunday paper, but I couldn't take my eyes off the page one headline: A THOUSAND SHOOTINGS. A thousand "victims," that is, from January 1st to June 30th. It's not just one side of town anymore. Another headline:
"THE ECHO OF GUNFIRE; violence unrelenting in many neighborhoods across the city." [a city, I might add, with strict "gun control" laws]
"The regular weekly statistics released by Chicago police include the number of shooting incidents, not the number of victims." [and according to stats, 2012 was even worse!]
The final tally for the July 4th weekend in Chicago was approximately 72 shot, 12 fatally. How's that "community organizing" working out for you, eh? Check out the Tribune's online map of the first six months' 1,000 shooting victims (I guess that doesn't include other forms of homocide):
www.chicagotribune.com/shootings
JUNE 15; LITTLE VILLAGE: "As dozens of mourners and friends stood quietly outside the crime scene , a gunman near Pulaski Road squeezed off three or four shots – then paused – and shot two more times. 'Sergeant, you hear that?' asked an officer, his gloved hand holding his radio. . . The victims in those separate Little Village slayings belonged to opposing gangs . . .
"Ridgeway and Lawndale avenues function as fluid dividing lines between two gangs that claim large swaths of the neighborhood . . . About 90 minutes later at 31st Street and Pulaski Road, the territory of another gang, an 18-year-old man inside a car and a 22-year-old woman standing nearby were wounded by shots from a gray SUV."
"HAVE WE REACHED THE STOMACH-TURNING POINT YET?" Jenkin Lloyd-Jones used to ask. I could go on and on with excerpts from the Sunday Trib, but I don't want to turn your stomach. In just one day recently, America lost 19 firemen and 1,000 soldiers – that's the daily average for the World War II veterans. "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?"
IRONICALLY, the victims of these secular amoral nihilistic gang-bangers often get taken to hospitals built by Christian groups. Although I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I don't get any pleasure from these stories, like some Chicago bashers might. My mother once worked at Michael Reese hospital. My father bought a Model T so he could drive from Rockford to see her. He may have even proposed to her in Chicago.
Personally, as a tree surgeon, I've worked on trees on the north side of Chicago, and at the Col. Robert McCormick estate in suburban Chicago. I've been to Chicago museums. I've seen a lot of America – from Hyde Park to Jekyll Island, no pun intended. The death of our Judeao-Christian cultural heritage is no laughing matter.
"My eyes are spent with weeping; my soul is in tumult;my heart is poured out in grief because of the destruction of the 'daughter of my people,' because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city." – Jeremiah
I saved an article from the January 13, 2012 USA TODAY just for a week like this. It was back during the GOP primary contest for the nomination. To the non-religious, the headline says it all:
"Republicans paint bleak picture of USA; in campaign speeches, candidates warn that country is barreling toward certain doom and must change its direction to survive."
It's not cool to talk such talk, of course – doom isn't cool, to the mainstream media anyway. And America refused, in 2012, to "change its direction."
P.S. As to why Romney lost, that's a mystery to some people, especially those who believe that God has blessed America in the past. I meant to say why, or one reason why, Romney lost a long time ago, and I've been procrastinating. But to make a long story short, as Lincoln believed, God is a fatherly God Who doesn't just turn his eyes when his children violate the Laws of Nature (see Jeremiah again). And as someone said, "Man forgives, Nature never forgives, and God sometimes forgives."
Bottom line: maybe God isn't through with us yet – not through correcting us yet – and He didn't want Romney's religion to become a scapegoat. Voila – our Nobel Prize winner got reelected.
PPS: As someone else said, "Be careful what you wish for." Don't wish you were a low-information voter, either.
MORE TO COME.
© Curtis Dahlgren
July 12, 2013
"With the weekend not even half over, the city's toll from violence stood at nine dead and at least 36 wounded as of Friday afternoon."
GOD HELP US. We're not talking Cairo or Damascus here; we're talking CHICAGO, the hip modern urban secular society that LBJ planned 50 years ago. Don't you wish, some days, that you were a low-information voter?
These are not the days predicted by Zechariah regarding "cities full of boys and girls playing in the streets." Not exactly! In the Windy City, they're playing with guns.
"When the shots were fired, [the victim's mother] thought it was fireworks still going off. And there was a guy standing on the opposite side of the street, shooting into the park. He let off about 30 rounds." – Chicago Tribune (July 6), "A festive night out erupts in violence"
The woman's 5-year-old son was hit in the stomach and leg.
"Fearful that waiting for an ambulance would waste time, a friend drove her and her boy to a nearby hopital. Jaden was transferred to Advocate Christ, where doctors removed his kidney, spleen, and pancreas . . . Friday, the boy remained on life support."
IF THE PRESIDENT HAD A SON, HE MAY HAVE LOOKED LIKE JADEN.
I hate paying $3.50 for a Sunday paper, but I couldn't take my eyes off the page one headline: A THOUSAND SHOOTINGS. A thousand "victims," that is, from January 1st to June 30th. It's not just one side of town anymore. Another headline:
"THE ECHO OF GUNFIRE; violence unrelenting in many neighborhoods across the city." [a city, I might add, with strict "gun control" laws]
"The regular weekly statistics released by Chicago police include the number of shooting incidents, not the number of victims." [and according to stats, 2012 was even worse!]
The final tally for the July 4th weekend in Chicago was approximately 72 shot, 12 fatally. How's that "community organizing" working out for you, eh? Check out the Tribune's online map of the first six months' 1,000 shooting victims (I guess that doesn't include other forms of homocide):
www.chicagotribune.com/shootings
JUNE 15; LITTLE VILLAGE: "As dozens of mourners and friends stood quietly outside the crime scene , a gunman near Pulaski Road squeezed off three or four shots – then paused – and shot two more times. 'Sergeant, you hear that?' asked an officer, his gloved hand holding his radio. . . The victims in those separate Little Village slayings belonged to opposing gangs . . .
"Ridgeway and Lawndale avenues function as fluid dividing lines between two gangs that claim large swaths of the neighborhood . . . About 90 minutes later at 31st Street and Pulaski Road, the territory of another gang, an 18-year-old man inside a car and a 22-year-old woman standing nearby were wounded by shots from a gray SUV."
"HAVE WE REACHED THE STOMACH-TURNING POINT YET?" Jenkin Lloyd-Jones used to ask. I could go on and on with excerpts from the Sunday Trib, but I don't want to turn your stomach. In just one day recently, America lost 19 firemen and 1,000 soldiers – that's the daily average for the World War II veterans. "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?"
IRONICALLY, the victims of these secular amoral nihilistic gang-bangers often get taken to hospitals built by Christian groups. Although I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I don't get any pleasure from these stories, like some Chicago bashers might. My mother once worked at Michael Reese hospital. My father bought a Model T so he could drive from Rockford to see her. He may have even proposed to her in Chicago.
Personally, as a tree surgeon, I've worked on trees on the north side of Chicago, and at the Col. Robert McCormick estate in suburban Chicago. I've been to Chicago museums. I've seen a lot of America – from Hyde Park to Jekyll Island, no pun intended. The death of our Judeao-Christian cultural heritage is no laughing matter.
"My eyes are spent with weeping; my soul is in tumult;my heart is poured out in grief because of the destruction of the 'daughter of my people,' because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city." – Jeremiah
I saved an article from the January 13, 2012 USA TODAY just for a week like this. It was back during the GOP primary contest for the nomination. To the non-religious, the headline says it all:
"Republicans paint bleak picture of USA; in campaign speeches, candidates warn that country is barreling toward certain doom and must change its direction to survive."
It's not cool to talk such talk, of course – doom isn't cool, to the mainstream media anyway. And America refused, in 2012, to "change its direction."
P.S. As to why Romney lost, that's a mystery to some people, especially those who believe that God has blessed America in the past. I meant to say why, or one reason why, Romney lost a long time ago, and I've been procrastinating. But to make a long story short, as Lincoln believed, God is a fatherly God Who doesn't just turn his eyes when his children violate the Laws of Nature (see Jeremiah again). And as someone said, "Man forgives, Nature never forgives, and God sometimes forgives."
Bottom line: maybe God isn't through with us yet – not through correcting us yet – and He didn't want Romney's religion to become a scapegoat. Voila – our Nobel Prize winner got reelected.
PPS: As someone else said, "Be careful what you wish for." Don't wish you were a low-information voter, either.
MORE TO COME.
© Curtis Dahlgren
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