The real problem is no one wants to determine why the FBI is screwing up. It won’t admit it. That would result in them being embarrassed which is the one thing it most fears. Better one thousand terrorist bombings than be embarrassed!

It acts as if things are fine. Well, folk, they aren’t. The best thing it has going for it is the timidity of our leaders. No one will call it to account.

How absurd is it to hear the Republican congress members complain about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary’s email and that despite overwhelming evidence against her the FBI’s director James Comey cleared her? Every once in a while a courageous and astute reporter, a dying breed, will ask whether they are criticizing Director James Comey, the man who wants to be another J. Edgar and who knows the only way to do that is to have his ten-year term extended indefinitely by a friendly president (Hillary?) the way J. Edgar did when he had the president after president keep him on long past his retirement due date. (Don’t think it could happen? Wasn’t the prior one extended two years without a peep from anyone? If it can be done for two it can be done for twenty.)

Have you seen this FBI “Seeking Information” poster? It has the picture of the two men shown in this post. The wording on it is: “The FBI is asking for the public’s assistance in locating these two unknown individuals. Closed circuit television recordings indicate that these individuals allegedly located a piece of luggage on the sidewalk, removed an improvised explosive device from the luggage, and then left the vicinity leaving the device behind but taking the luggage.. . . The FBI is interested in speaking to these people and recovering the luggage.”

The matter at issue is a bombing that occurred in New York City last Saturday on September 17. It has received much publicity.  The poster was published on Wednesday, September 21.

Is it possible that two people could have picked up the suitcase, taken out a pressure cooker and placed it on the sidewalk, walked off with the suitcase and not have any idea that what they discovered may have an important connection to the bombings?

Reading a 2014  well researched and written article in the Boston Globe about Jerry Remy’s son reminded me of the time I created the Repeat Felon Program (RFP) in the Norfolk District Attorney’s office. The idea behind the program was that there were some people who belonged in State Prison, at that time it was called Walpole rather than Cedar Junction. These were people with extensive adult felony records who were either being put on probation over and over again in the district court; or, if they received a sentence it was a short one to the house of corrections (the House) of two years or less.

Every county has what we called the House. Nothing is corrected there. It is a county jail. It is not a prison. It holds people waiting for their trials who cannot make bail as well as people doing lesser type sentences. It is not “big time” where the worst of the criminals are confined; it is still being locked up but some find it more home-like than they would prison.

Over the Labor Day holiday Chicago had 13 murdered and over fifty persons shot. This meant that over 500 people had been murdered in Chicago in 2015, 400 of whom were African-Americans. I wrote before what Superintendent Eddie Johnson said about them: “It’s not a police issue, it’s a society issue.  Impoverished neighborhoods, people without hope do these kinds of things. You show me a man that doesn’t have hope, I’ll show you one that’s willing to pick up a gun and do anything with it. Those are the issues that’s driving this violence. CPD is doing its job.”

Previously I wrote to say he was wrong when he says it is not a police issue. It clearly is. The next matter to consider the other part of the answer. Is this is a society issue?

I suggest that it is. It is a major issue in our society even though it is confined mostly to black areas in our cities. It is tempting to say it is not a society issue but a black issue. The problem with that type of response is you are isolating a racial group from the rest of society. Unless you want to think of American society as comprising two parts: blacks and others then you cannot escape with that thought.

I wrote earlier this week about Chicago’s murders which are on a record-setting pace this year. 400 blacks have been murdered by the time it passed the Labor Day holiday. My wife and daughter were in Chicago over that holiday but why was it I was never concerned for their safety. It was because they were not in the areas where the murders were taking place. Strange to say in America we have safe zones and danger zones in some of our cities. The danger zones are usually in the black areas.

I checked some statistics writing this. Throughout our country the majority of the cities that have the highest murder rates also have the highest percentage of blacks. The same goes for the most violent cities. Fortunately most Americans other than African-Americans do not have to spend much time in those areas.

This is why the great majority of the victims in these areas are black. The murders are mostly black upon black. They far surpass any black murders by police officers about which we hear so much from groups like Black Lives Matter or from those protesting America by sitting down during our national anthem.

Chicago has seen over 510 murders this year. 5.2% or 26 were of other than blacks and Hispanics; 16.4% or about 84 were Hispanic; and the remaining 78.4% or 400 were black. The deaths were only a small portion of the shootings. There were 2,982 shootings. That boils down to about 2 homicides a day and 12 people shot and wounded every day.

Chicago’s mayor is Obama’s buddy Rahm Emmanuel. Rahm is one of those “gifted” politicians like Bill Clinton. People like to gift them money in exchange for their influence. Imagine the return these people must get  from the public weal if they are willing to pay these sums.

Bill was given 18 million by a private college so it could use his name in selling its programs;  Rahm was paid a monthly sum of $450,000  by a Wall Street firm Wasserstein Perella prior to having “enjoyed a generous retainer from Goldman Sachs, which paid him “to introduce us to people.,” . . . ”  

In many places prostitution, usually meaning a woman selling herself, is outlawed. That is because the women who engage in it for the most part have little say in the way laws are made. As outcasts from the system, and mostly as down-and-outers, those in power feel a moral superiority by kicking them around.

You can thank Bill Clinton for Kim Jung Un’s having his little nuclear arsenal. You have to understand Bill lived in dread of having to be other than the “good ol’ boy.” Nothing could be worse than having to stand up to someone. Why that is so few have tried to explain. Was it he was too concerned with women and making money deals that he recoiled at the idea getting involved in something that would take his mind off of that? That’s all right if you are a governor; but if you’re president well some times you have to make hard calls rather than duck them and leave them for someone else.

Lets go back to 1994 after he finished his first year in office. Here is what is reported according to his Secretary of Defense who talked about it five years later: “The . . . crisis developed during the summer of 1994. Then, according to former Pentagon officials, the U.S. military drew up plans to send cruise missiles and F-117 stealth fighters to strike a small nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, in order to prevent North Korea from recovering the raw material to make nuclear bombs.” 

The question that we must ask as Obama glides through his last few months in office is one that Ronald Reagan would want us to ask: “Are We Better Off Now Than We Were Eight Years Ago?” One thing for certain is that in one area we a definitely much worse off. That has been his policy of “strategic patience” in relation to North Korea. That has been a dismal failure. I never knew that was his policy until I read this.

I always thought strategic patience as an approach one takes when you ultimately control the outcome. It was most effective rearing young children. They have their fits and starts that often pass with time. If they persist too long or are a little too much then sometimes you need to impose sanctions like having them stand in the corner.

Of course, there is an exception to that. If you see the little toddler climbing up onto the sill of a third floor window then you act quickly. For patience there is foolhardy.