DescentBB

Last week, the New York Times diverted itself from its current obsession, i.e., the anticipated failures of the incoming administration, and focused momentarily on one of the manifest failures of the current one.

A December 9 story by Times writer Monica Davey ran under the headline, “In Chicago, Bodies Pile Up at Intersection of ‘Depression and Rage,’” and told of the horrifying levels of violence seen in some neighborhoods of President Obama’s adopted home town.

Ms. Davey focused on a single police district, the 11th, on Chicago’s West Side, where 91 people had been killed so far this year, an 89 percent increase over the same period in 2015. Citywide, killings are up by a more modest but still shocking 56 percent over last year. Five of Chicago’s 22 police districts, all on the South or West Sides, account for most of the city’s rise in crime.

The story paints a bleak picture, to be sure. But this is the New York Times we’re speaking of, so naturally Ms. Davey didn’t go so far as to assign responsibility to President Obama for the deadly decay in Chicago...

...Chicago is in the process of surrendering to its gangs, all because too many people, including President Obama, cling to the childish fantasy that crime would disappear if only the cops were nicer.

Seven hundred and sixty-one people have been killed in the city so far this year, and it is only the frigid weather that might prevent that number from going over 800 by Dec. 31. But whatever the final death tally for the year turns out to be, one thing is all but certain: next year’s will be worse.