Roses are Red, Crime is Blue By Brian C. Joondeph

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/roses_are_red_crime_is_blue.html

Roses are red, violets are blue, is an old nursery rhyme, poem, and eventual song title, ending in “the honey’s sweet and so are you.” A modern-day version might be rewritten:

Peace is red, crime is blue

Vote for Democrats, and you’ll find this true

Rising crime in American cities is often ignored by the media which, instead, focuses on the Omicron variant and fully vaccinated universities and sports teams shutting down over new COVID cases, flying in the face of common sense and everything we have been told about vaccinations.

ABC News dipped its toe into crime reporting recently with this headline, “It’s just crazy: 12 major cities hit all-time homicide records.” While COVID cases might be spiking, so is crime, with some cities breaking decades-old homicide records.

“It’s terrible to every morning get up and have to go look at the numbers and then look at the news and see the stories. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy and this needs to stop,” Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said after his city surpassed its annual homicide record of 500, which stood since 1990.

Is this what President Joe Biden means by “build back better”?  Is this somehow former President Donald Trump’s fault, despite him being out of office for almost a year now? ABC News offers a few potential explanations but misses a big one.

Experts say there are a number of reasons possibly connected to the jump in homicides, including strained law enforcement staffing, a pronounced decline in arrests and continuing hardships from the pandemic, but that there is no clear answer across the board.

It’s interesting that the media and law enforcement have trouble finding motives or explanations when those might be politically incorrect. For example, if a young Muslim male shouts “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire on a crowd of shoppers, big media will struggle to find motive. This story of a French terrorist shooting makes the point, “The New York Times claimed Wednesday that it is ‘unclear’ what motivated the gunman who shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before opening fire on a Christmas market in France.”

A Larry Krasner Christmas Happy holidays from Philadelphia’s criminals to a wedding party and even a U.S. Congresswoman.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-larry-krasner-christmas-crime-philadelphia-11640208516?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

On the unseasonably warm night of Dec. 10, a groom stepped outside of his wedding reception for a breath of fresh air. Two men saw him. One drew a handgun, and they demanded the groom’s Rolex watch. The robbery occurred downtown a short stroll away from the Liberty Bell.

Welcome to the holiday season in Larry Krasner’s Philadelphia. Days before the groom’s ambush, the progressive district attorney claimed that “we don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence.” The remarks infuriated Philadelphia residents, who are the victims of the crime he said doesn’t exist.

Philadelphia has seen a record 544 homicides so far this year, up from 347 in the entirety of 2019. Police have recorded some 1,785 nonfatal shootings this year. More than 84% of the victims of the gun violence in 2021 were black, according to the Philadelphia Office of the Controller.

Police data also shows some 2,283 gun robberies as of Dec. 19, a 28.6% increase over the same period last year. Retail theft is up more than 20% this year, and auto theft more than 15%, with nearly 11,000 vehicles stolen.

Corruption Just Isn’t What It Used To Be Anthony Daniels

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/12/corruption-just-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/

“Regulatory corruption is much worse than the traditional illicit-payment type, that is to say money passed under the table, for the latter can sometimes actually help to get things done where there are official obstacles to doing them, whereas the former politicises everything and is completely obstructive, uncreative and leads inevitably to the legalised looting of the public purse on a scale that the traditionally corrupt can only dream of, the difference being between wholesale and retail. Moreover, the more traditional kind of corruption is relatively easy to spot and clearly defined, and therefore potentially controllable by means of the law, insofar as anything that is consonant with human nature is controllable by the law, while the intellectual corruption of (say) regulations enforcing positive discrimination exerts a much more baleful effect on society and requires an assault on both freedom and truth.”

A delusion is defined as a fixed false belief that is impervious to reason or evidence and that is out of keeping with a person’s cultural background. The last condition has to be added because, without it, everyone would believe that all those who disagreed with him were deluded. A Muslim would think a Christian deluded, a Christian would think a Muslim deluded, and an atheist would think both deluded. If everyone is deluded, however, no one is. It is therefore dangerous to diagnose delusion in a politician just because you don’t like him.

Nevertheless, twenty years ago I felt that there must be something wrong—medically wrong—with Mr Blair, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I could not quite put my finger on what it was, however. It came to me in a flash, though, like the illumination of Archimedes in his bath: he was deluded!

Americans Fled ‘Woke’ States in ‘Historic’ Numbers in 2021 By Victoria Taft

The communist Chinese-inflicted COVID virus and reactions by American Democrat politicians created devastating changes in the U.S. population in 2021, according to statistics revealed by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday.

The U.S. experienced a “historic” decline in the number of children that were born, and Americans fled Leftist, freedom-sucking, gulag-like cities and states where Democrat dictators toyed with their constituents the way a cat plays with a flapping bird before devouring it.

First, Americans gave birth to a “record low” number of babies in 2021, in large part due to the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal reported that although American population replacement has been going down since the 2008-2009 recession — another Democrat-fueled disaster — with “just 393,000 people in the year that ended July 1, including 148,000 more births than deaths … it was the first year in which growth from births exceeding deaths fell below net arrivals from abroad, according to the bureau.”

And there was also a “historic” migration of citizens, whose Democrat politicians issued mandates, lockdowns, and freedom-sucking COVID edicts ever their populations. And those states notched historic net population losses as droves of Americans fled to more free states.

Look at this map from the Census Bureau.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

The map shows the states with the worst COVID restrictions and some of the highest crime rates lost American population.

The states with the worst net population loss — New York, California, and Illinois — chased out nearly 700,000 Americans to other states. Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia had a net influx of 713,000 Americans to their freer and less-crowded states.

The Census Bureau reported:

Between 2020 and 2021, 33 states saw population increases and 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population, 11 of which had losses of over 10,000 people. This is a historically large number of states to lose population in a year.

Oregon and Washington, whose leaders imposed ridiculous COVID lockdowns and mandates, shockingly had a virtual net neutral change according to the Census Bureau, but Americans fled the tropical paradise of Hawaii due to its draconian lockdowns and mandates.

The top spot for population loss in 2021 was Washington, D.C., which reported that 2.9% of its population got the heck out of the nation’s capital.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Americans have voted with their feet, and they’ve shown that they will go to places where there is more freedom to conduct their own lives.

Foreign-born population soars to new record under Biden; highest rate of immigrants since 1910 By Stephen Dinan

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/dec/20/foreign-born-population-soars-to-new-record-under-/

The U.S. has had a massive surge in immigration this year, with as many as 1.5 million newcomers and a record 46.2 million foreign-born people, according to a report for the Center for Immigration Studies.

After a deep trough last year, likely because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel and migration restrictions imposed to control the spread, the flow of people rebounded around the time President Biden was elected.

In numbers never seen before, they are coming legally through airports and land border crossings and illegally across the Rio Grande and remote regions of Arizona and California.

“There was pent-up demand for legal immigration, and illegal immigration has exploded in one of the greatest surges, if not the greatest, we’ve ever seen,” said Steven A. Camarota, the demographer who was the chief author of the report. “It’s driving the numbers up and up and up.”

As it stands, 14.2% of the U.S. population is foreign-born, or 1 out of every 7 people. That is the highest rate of immigrants in the population since 1910, when the number was 14.7%. At current trends, the government says, the U.S. will break that record well before the end of this decade.

Panic! At the DCCC: The Democrats’ House Campaign Arm Is Descending Into Mayhem Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/12/21/panic-at-the-dccc-the-democrats-house-campaign-arm-is-descending-into-mayhem-n2600894

Two dozen House Democrats have decided to file their retirement papers. They’re not going to go through being bloodied and beaten in what could be an absolute bruiser for the Democratic Party as the 2022 midterms begin. For starters, they got a taste of how far they’ve fallen with voters in the 2021 elections. Virginia booted all the Democrats that occupied statewide offices. The GOP retook the governor’s mansion and the House of Delegates. In New Jersey, Republican Jack Ciattarelli came within inches of clipping incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy. State Sen. Stephen Sweeney, a top Democrat in southern New Jersey, was defeated for re-election. That’s something I thought I’d never see. You can’t do much without Sweeney’s blessing as he was the president of the NJ State Senate.

Now, with Build Back Better in the toilet and being flushed down the drain, moderate House Democrats are saddled with defending a vote for this massive left-wing spending package. They threw their lot in with Pelosi and got screwed—royally. To make matters worse, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) appears to be totally out of touch and adrift on what to do. With Biden’s sinking approval ratings, there are no life jackets unless the DCCC can conjure some messaging magic. It hasn’t.

Demolishing Democratic Delusions Byron York

https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2021/12/22/demolishing-democratic-delusions-n2600922

Sen. Joe Manchin’s announcement that he will not support the Democrats’ giant spending bill should not have been a surprise to anyone who has been watching Manchin for the last few months. Yet many Democrats, especially in the White House and in the progressive wing of the House of Representatives, appeared shocked when Manchin told Fox News’ Bret Baier, “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t.”

They apparently believed Manchin would ultimately come around, and do so before Christmas. When he did not, they were stunned.

Their reaction is the latest manifestation of a mass delusion affecting Democrats in Washington. For nearly a year, since Jan. 20, 2021, they have believed they could enact a nation-changing agenda — shades of FDR and LBJ! — without having won a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate. Somehow, all on their own and without any Republican support, they could bring landmark legislation to a 50-50 tie vote in the Senate, and then have Vice President Kamala Harris break the tie in the Democrat’s favor. They seemed to forget that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson had huge majorities in both House and Senate when they enacted sprawling New Deal and Great Society legislation, respectively.

Even the structure of their massive spending bill, which they called Build Back Better, was shaped by their lack of a Senate majority. Democratic leaders knew how hard it would be to get anything through the Senate — to keep all 50 of their own senators together — so they packed nearly the entire Biden agenda of social spending and climate projects into a one big bill. Then everyone on their side would have to vote for it, wouldn’t they?

Biden’s Legacy: A Nuclear Iran by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18051/biden-legacy-nuclear-iran

The Iranian regime is currently advancing its nuclear program at a rapid pace, spinning centrifuges and enriching uranium at a high level, all while the international community has no access to monitor the regime’s nuclear activities to check how far away the Iranian government is from obtaining nuclear weapons.
While the Iranian leaders claim that the country’s nuclear program is designed for civilian purposes….[a] joint statement issued by the UK, France and Germany acknowledged that the Iranian regime “has no credible civilian need for uranium metal R&D and production, which are a key step in the development of a nuclear weapon.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is completely silent as the Iranian regime disregards and refuses to answer the IAEA’s questions about three undeclared clandestine nuclear sites in Iran.
All the Biden administration has done so far is to appease a regime that chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that is determined to push the US out of the Middle East.
Iran — one of only four state sponsors of terrorism, according to the US Department of State, as well as a leading violator of human rights — is also committed to uprooting and replacing Israel and seizing all the oil in the Middle East from Syria to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
So, we are just to sit back and watch the predatory, terrorist regime of Iran, which has already begun taking over the entire Middle East, become nuclear state and wreck the Middle East — under the Biden administration’s watch.

The Biden administration seems to have no clear agenda on how to stop the Iranian regime from going nuclear. It has been almost a year and seven rounds of negotiations, but nothing has come out of these talks except that the ruling mullahs of Iran keep advancing their nuclear program, with Russia backing them.

LA Sheriff Slams ‘Careless and Irresponsible’ Liberal DAs Undoing Police Work By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/la-sheriff-slams-careless-and-irresponsible-liberal-das-undoing-police-work/

The Los Angeles County sheriff slammed California’s liberal prosecutors on Tuesday, saying they are living in a “woke palace” and not facing the consequences of their decisions to undermine the work of law enforcement officers amid a surge in crime.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva said during an appearance on Fox News that liberal District Attorney George Gascon has declined to prosecute more than 12,000 cases after county deputies apprehended suspected criminals.

“So that is disheartening for any cop to think all their work is being undone by a careless and irresponsible district attorney,” he said. “But they’re not going to stop doing their job. The deputies … keep doing your job, don’t use the excuse of someone else not doing their job to avoid it – and it’s working.”

“So we’re making the effort out there,” he added. “What we need now is, we need responsible district attorneys who are going to file their cases. And if they want to play the role of public defender, they should just quit their job and go over to the public defenders – and everything they say makes perfect sense for a public defender, not a district attorney.”

Villanueva also reacted to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s claims that calls for action against recent crime spikes are “knee-jerk reactions” and that smash-and-grab looting in California is “not new.”

The unicorns of crime-wave California As violence surges and police dwindle, the woke take shelter in magical thinking Gilbert T. Sewall

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/unicorns-crime-wave-woke-california/

A crime wave haunts blue-state America, and nowhere more so than in super-blue California. Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore is trying to assure residents and tourists that violent crime is not out of control, which is not at all reassuring. Police departments statewide are stressed, and finding able recruits is a struggle. Faced with surging gun violence and a dwindling number of police officers, Oakland has proposed $50,000 signing bonuses to veteran cops.

Since 2014, California voters have unshackled a fast-expanding criminal class that rolls expertly with the dice. Starting with Proposition 47, the state penal code has reduced many felonies to misdemeanors. Shoplifting and petty theft have been effectively decriminalized. Serious crimes go unprosecuted. Elected officials and residents alike prefer virtue theater to civic management.

One eighth of the nation’s residents live in the economic and cultural colossus of California, so what direction the state takes matters. Why its progressive leaders and their constituencies condone violence against persons and property, car break-ins, prostitution, open-air drug dealing, and aggressive begging remains puzzling.