Instead of grandstanding for the Olympics which Obama hopes will change his slumping approval ratings, if Obama really wants to do something useful, maybe he should address the teen violence problem in Chicago.

Derrion Albert was beaten to death for no apparent reason. Unusual? Not really. In 2008 Chicago had more than 30 teens die from such encounters.

This certainly raises questions about Obama's effectiveness as a legislator and previously as a community organizer.

The Olympics will not make Chicago a safer place for teens.

I take it you also expected the same of Bush and Texas when Bush was in office? Right?

Teen violence, literacy, infant mortality, I know you expected Bush to address these problems in Texas while he was POTUS, because well if not that would kinda make you a hypocrite, and I KNOW you're anything but that . . . right?

Getting the Olympics in Chicago in 2016 would be good for the whole country. You're not rooting for failure are you? You're a teabagger aren't you?

Nice strawman.

Infant mortality???? Had to find a really reach for that one.

Literacy is an easy one.

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What has Michelle Obama done?

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Wow. Kissing babies on one occasion.

BTW ever hear of No Child Left Behind? Maybe not the best but more than ACORN.

Olympics profits the local economies but the whole country? Give me a break. It is nothing but a photo op.

Wait think about the Iranian soccer team getting mugged because they wandered out of the safe zone. That should really help America. Right up there with Munich.

Ranger,

Chicago is much safer than it was before Obama became a (take your pick) community organizer or state legislator. Does the improved safety now versus then mean Obama solved the problem? Of course not. But similarly, that there are still problems does not mean they are Obama's fault (or that he was ineffective in dealing with them); it's far too much to lay on any one man's shoulders.

Beyond that, it would be impossible to hold the Olympics without greatly investing in Chicago, including improved safety. In that light, Obama (if he's able) getting the Olympics to Chicago does help to address safety issues in Chicago.

Your argument seems to be: there's violence in Chicago that Obama didn't fix, and he's trying to get the Olympics instead of fixing the problem. But really, Chicago has improved since Obama (so your first point rings hollow) and getting the Olympics will likely further improve the situation (so your second point seems to miss the mark as well).

Public opinion is not on your side:

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Funny crime is still high but it is down 10% this year over last when Obama was involved.

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Comparing Chicago to other cities is hard because Chicago does not comply with the national reporting standards for violent crime (I wonder why?). Some areas are hard to rate especially when the western and northern suburbs are a lot safer than other areas.

Ranger,

How does an n of 37 on a question about which is safer, Chicago or NYC, reflect at all on how safe Chicago is now versus how safe it was in the past?

And how involved do you think Obama was last year? I mean, seriously, do you think a Senator, any Senator, by leaving his position, can cause a 10% drop in anything? You sound a bit crazy when you try to attribute a 10% drop in crime this year to Obama's being President instead of Senator.

Sorry, but you have given nothing substantive to reflect on except your opinion which while I am sure you highly value it, the rest of us are more than skeptical.

I agree completely, anecdotal evidence is weak at best. However, all you've given is statistics of an irrelevant sort, and I don't believe that's any better. You might as well say the sky is blue, therefore Chicago sucks because of Obama. Obviously, that's a stupid thing to say.

In 2007 (a year for which data is available on Wikipedia), the murder rate in Chicago was 15.6 per 100,000 individuals. About twenty five years earlier and shortly before Obama became a community organizer (and the data closest to 1985, Obama's first year as a community organizer, I can find on the first page of google), in 1983, the rate was ~22/100,000 people. Chicago was safer, so far as homocides go, after Obama than before him.

Of course, this safety cannot be attributed to Obama, nor can the violence that exists in the city. None-the-less, if you're going to blame Obama for all the violence in Chicago, I'm not sure how you can ignore the fact that violence in Chicago has decreased since Obama has come on the scene.

If Obama cannot be blamed for the violence in Chicago, then it is hard to associate him with the safety. The perspective you fail to mention is that Chicago's murder rate is nearly 20 times that of Green Bay Wisconsin or Naperville, IL (0.8) which is a western suburb of Chicago.

Is that your definition of safe?

Last year a record number (36) of high school kids were murdered.

Is that your definition of safe?

TheRanger:

If Obama cannot be blamed for the violence in Chicago, then it is hard to associate him with the safety.

It should be exceedingly difficult to blame Obama for the safety of Chicago. You will never hear me say either that Chicago is an extremely safe city nor that it is as it is because Obama.

With to your numbers, do you credit Obama with the safety of Naperville? After all, he was one of their Senators for the last two years. Of course, however, you do not, nor should you. For the same reason, I don't think you can credit Obama for the improvements that have occurred in Chicago over the last twenty or thirty years (worst was in the late seventies/early eighties, then again around 92/93); on the list of people with the power to fix the problems in Chicago a US Senator is surprisingly far down the list (and a community organizer or Constitutional law instructor falls farther down that list).

I never said Chicago was safe, nor did I say Obama deserves credit for anything that happens here in Chicago. What I have said, repeatedly, is a combination of two things. First, it's foolish to look at the violent crime rate today while ignoring what it was in the past (and how it's changed). Second, it's even more foolish to look at the violent crime rate today, again ignoring what it was in the past, and then blame one person for all the troubles.

"Chicago is much safer than it was before Obama became a (take your pick) community organizer or state legislator." Does this refresh your memory? My original post made the point that bringing the Olympics to Chicago would not make Chicago safer. No doubt the Olympic committee also saw the cell phone footage of the murder. Perhaps there was a better use of resources than bringing the Olympics to Chicago.

Ranger,

Your original post also made the point, "This certainly raises questions about Obama's effectiveness as a legislator and previously as a community organizer." For being so concerned with your other point (about Olympics/security) you sure haven't bothered to defend it at all in our back-and-forth. In fact, you didn't bother to support it at all, either in your toppost or elsewhere in this thread.

I might agree with you (on the Olympics/security) point if you pointed out that Olympic-associated gentrification could compress gangland territories and lead to additional problems, or if you said that the infrastructure planned for Chicago (when the Olympics were still a possibility) would create additional disparities between different regions of the city. But you didn't say that. Instead, you made an unsupported assertion that also ignored a substantial investment in security promised were the Olympics to be held in Chicago.

You also took a tragic event, one you apparently have no clue about (Albert's beating wasn't without reason, though of course the reason doesn't justify the attack) and used it to make a cheap, ineffective, and half-assed political point. Classy.

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

Nice, but meaningless verbage. I'll tell you what. You walk down the street where the kid was murdered. That is a supported point because there were 30 plus other kids killed in similar circumstances in Chicago. You can whine that it didn't happen on this or that particular street or play the hope for change card by wishing that if the Olympics had come to Chicago everything would suddenly be ok because someone through money at a problem. But it won't change a thing.