Yet once more, Jeff Tiedrich for the win ...

in numbers never seen before. Win, win.

There is a lot of violence here and a lot of crooked and anti vax cops. It's a big mess. I'm not sure less cops will bring down the violence. I don't know what the answer is. I just know things are bad here.

... all those bad cops never seemed to get a handle on.

There are too many states that don't have a vaccine or mask mandate. Lots of places for them to flee to. My southern town hired a new police chief earlier this year. The 2 finalists were both on administrative leave from their positions, and weren't allowed to discuss why. We hired one.

We know too many "problem" Leo's find work in neighboring counties. And "problem" nurses often switch jobs when disciplinary action is looming.

I'm still looking for a local dentist who requires their staff be vaccinated. Cancelled my August cleaning because neither hygienist was vaccinated.

outbreaks for the forseeable future.

Nor do I adhere to the theory that African-Americans are inherently violent or more so than Caucasians or any other arbitrary designation.

More cops also does NOTHING to improve safety - think about it. When do people generally call the police? AFTER a crime or at best during one...maybe 10-25% of crimes happen in the presence of an officer. The shoot outs and gun battles and pursuits all happen AFTER the initial crime far more often than not.

Police clean up crimes, they rarely prevent them.

So what DOES cause crime, especially violent crime? Two things are at or near the top of the list - 1) poverty and 2) lack of opportunity. GOP fools love to then flip this on its head and start babbling on about "equality of outcomes" and "socialism" and "communism" and "fascism" (forgive them, they were mostly dropped on their heads as infants and not shown much human contact as children) - but that is wrong and mainly a deflection to prevent the real issue from being discussed or debated in rational ways.

Poverty - and the root cause of it, the aforementioned lack of Opportunity - are THE driving forces in promoting crime and violence. Much of the gun violence in Chicago and other urban centers is based on gang activity and territorial disputes or vengeance killings. That is no different than the way rich white people use the USA military to enforce policies in Central and South America that dictate control for multinational (read: white American owned) corporations like Dole or Goodyear. To pretend otherwise is simply disingenuous.

Anyone who honestly believes a kid at Martin Luther King High School is getting the same opportunity in life as someone at New Trier or Homewood-Flossmoor or private schools is delusional and it does not stop at High School either. There's only one phrase uttered by Donald Trump that is remotely true, and it is this "It's a rigged system folks". It is indeed and no one in power has the desire or the allies to drag it fully into the open and debate the best ways to actually deal with the problems...so instead we get slogans like "MAGA" and we are pushed into competing tribes for the amusement of the owners. The top 0.01% who are nothing more than the reincarnation of the very monarchy that the American Revolution fought against.

We're heading back to the "divine rights of kings" and the saddest thing is many of the people who will be forced into serfdom are cheerleading the efforts. It is accelerating now and building momentum that will become impossible to stop. Once terminal velocity is reached, there will be a crash. The only questions are when and how bad it will be? In the meantime, the false narratives and racially motivated BS is shoveled in our faces daily and the victims of the system are portrayed as the "real threat" to white suburban voters.

Your last paragraph expresses my belief in where the future may lie. Is there enough time to “right the boat”? We will know by 2023.

They must believe in that reQublicOn idea of "Party before patients"

Are like lifeguards who don't believe in swimming.

Many think that hordes of vaxxed people are dying and that vax death rates are running twice covid death rates.

They say that maybe in a few years mRNA will be proven safe.

Then we can get elected representatives who don't believe in elections to quit too!