Orange Man Bad again... about Baltimore.
![[Image: attachment.php?aid=6129]](http://rogue-nation3.com/attachment.php?aid=6129)
So Trump's friends are hand-feeding the drugs to the residents of Baltimore and ergo, a lack of decent conduct and hygiene
closely follows. Ignore the fact that Nancy Pelosi grew-up there and became Mayor, and ignore that fact the same woman
quickly ran away to the West Coast in order to represent California... another fine city.
Anyway, what does The Spectator say about Baltimore?
It isn't looking good. Maybe if we take a look at Baltimore before the President's latest tweet, we might
get a better handle on what he was on about.
Oh... I see.
Quote:Bernie Sanders blasted Baltimore as ‘Third World country’ and ‘disgrace’ in past comments.SOURCE:
28th July 2019.
'President Trump drew a torrent of criticism from Democrats on Saturday over a series of Twitter messages aimed
at U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and the Baltimore district that Cummings represents in Congress.
But just a few years ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders --a candidate seeking the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential
nomination --took his own shots at Baltimore, a struggling Northeast city grappling with high rates of violent crime,
drug abuse, poverty and political corruption.
“Anyone who took the walk that we took around this neighborhood would not think you’re in a wealthy nation,” Sanders
said during a visit to the city’s West Baltimore section in December 2015, the Baltimore Sun reported.
“You would think that you were in a Third World country.”
The independent U.S. senator from Vermont also referred to Baltimore as “a community in which half of the people don’t
have jobs.” “We’re talking about a community in which there are hundreds of buildings that are uninhabitable,” he added,
according to the Sun.
Sanders was visiting the section of Baltimore where a 25-year-old black man named Freddie Gray was arrested earlier
that year for allegedly possessing an illegal knife. Gray fell into a coma while in police custody and died a few days later,
sparking a national outcry against members of the city’s police department.
But all six police officers who were suspended in connection with the death either had all charges against them dropped,
or were acquitted.
Quote:In 2016, Sanders posted a Twitter message about Baltimore.
“Residents of Baltimore’s poorest boroughs have lifespans shorter than people
living under dictatorship in North Korea,” Sanders wrote. “That is a disgrace.”
The bleak portrait Sanders painted back then seems little different from the one Trump presented Saturday, in which the
president said the city that had become a monument to governmental failures.
In one message, Trump described Cummings’ district as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”
“If he spent more time in Baltimore,” the president added, “maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”
“Where is all this money going?” Trump asked later, referring to federal dollars sent to Baltimore over the years.
“How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!”
Prominent Democrats –including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who was born in Baltimore and whose father
was a Baltimore mayor, and presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren –were quick to defend Cummings and fire back
at Trump. Also on Saturday, Sanders appeared to abandon his past critiques of Baltimore and focus instead on defending
Cummings and bashing the president.
“Here’s what’s really going on,” Sanders wrote. “@RepCummings has been busy revealing the failures of the Trump
administration and exposing the greed of Trump’s friends in the pharmaceutical industry, and our racist president doesn’t
like it.”
So Trump's friends are hand-feeding the drugs to the residents of Baltimore and ergo, a lack of decent conduct and hygiene
closely follows. Ignore the fact that Nancy Pelosi grew-up there and became Mayor, and ignore that fact the same woman
quickly ran away to the West Coast in order to represent California... another fine city.
Anyway, what does The Spectator say about Baltimore?
Quote:How Dangerous Is Baltimore?The Spectator:
24th January 2019.
'Baltimore is a dangerous place, with a homicide rate just slightly below that of St. Louis, the American city where you face
the highest odds of becoming a murder victim. Something to consider if you are thinking about moving to Baltimore because
you have been offered a job there. At, for instance, Johns Hopkins.
Or, perhaps, you are a bright high school senior applying for admission to elite universities. Will Hopkins be on your list?
Or will you pass, not because the school doesn’t measure up but because you fear you might be shot down crossing the
street there, on your way to class?
It is a question worth thinking about, according to an exceedingly successful and generous Hopkins alum.
Michael Bloomberg believes that security at his alma mater is insufficient. There is a university police force but its members
are not armed. Bloomberg, according to this report in the Baltimore Sun, wants to change that and says so plainly.
“When you have a city that has the murder rate that Baltimore has, I think it’s ridiculous to think that they shouldn’t be armed.”
Bloomberg is, of course, famously anti-gun and has backed up his words with his money. Of which there is plenty.
He has given lavishly in the cause of gun control and is easily capable of outspending the NRA, which he appears willing to do.
There is nothing especially surprising about his arguing for arming the university security officers and he explains his position
lucidly:
“One of the things I do hear all the time from people who are trying to decide where their kids are going to go to college,
they are worried very much about the crime rate, and when they want to go to a hospital, they worry about the crime rate.”
Unarmed security personal aren’t much of a defense against the killers who make Baltimore a dangerous place.
A whistle and a night stick aren’t much up against a Glock or an AK. The police, obviously, aren’t much protection either.
Otherwise Baltimore wouldn’t be close on the heels of St. Louis and well ahead of Chicago in the ranking of urban murder
rates.
Still, Bloomberg’s position has been met with opposition and a group called Students Against Private Police expressed
dissatisfaction with Bloomberg’s remarks. In a statement, the group said Bloomberg’s support for a private, armed police
force is at odds with his other work to promote gun control.
Mr. Bloomberg should get his way and one suspects that he will. He is easily Hopkins’ most generous benefactor having
given billions to the University, most recently in the form of “a $1.8 billion [gift] for financial aid, announced in November
[which] represents the largest single contribution to an American university in history.”
Once the University’s security people are armed, as Bloomberg desires, the students and faculty, doctors and nurses,
administrators and ordinary employees at Hopkins will be at least marginally safer and more secure.
Things work out that way for members of what we have become accustomed to thinking of as “the elite.”
Those parts of Baltimore that are outside the jurisdiction of the Hopkins security force will no doubt remain dangerous and
hostile to ordinary good citizens going about the business of their lives. They will be reduced to depending on the Baltimore
police who have, demonstrably, failed at protecting them.
They can be vulnerable constantly and victims all too often or they can look to their own self-defense.
Which means arming themselves against the predators.
It takes a hard and elite heart to say they shouldn’t be permitted this choice...'
It isn't looking good. Maybe if we take a look at Baltimore before the President's latest tweet, we might
get a better handle on what he was on about.
Quote:Baltimore is one of the most dangerous places to live, with somebody murdered almost daily.News.Com.au
12th August 2017
'It looks like a classic all-American town, but is actually murder city and one of the most dangerous places to live in the world.
From the outskirts, Balimore looks like an all-American town —the birthplace of the national anthem, famous for its crab shacks,
and the home of the Baltimore Ravens. But the Maryland city is in the grip of a violent crime epidemic, dubbed “murder city" for
its status as one of the most dangerous places to live in the US.
This week, community advocates and leaders reached crisis point after a “nobody kill anybody” ceasefire failed to last 72 hours.
Despite daily rallies and vigils, just 41 hours went past without a death, before a 24-year old man was shot and an elderly man
beaten to death.
World War II veteran Wadell Tate, 97, died in his pyjamas inside the home he had lived in for 60 years after a violent intrusion by
burglars, the Washington Post reported. His daughter, Sylvia Swann, 65, said “they took away his right to die on his own.”
More than 200 people have been murdered in the city already this year — double the rate of Chicago. It could see as many as
400 homicides in 2017, a per capita record for the United States, and in some months, the number of murders exceeds the
number of days.
As a result, a young black man in Baltimore faces as great a risk to his life as an American soldier at the height of the war in Iraq.
Activist Erricka Bridgeford, one of the organisers of the ‘Baltimore Ceasefire.
Erricka Bridgeford helped organise the recent ceasefire after her cousin was shot dead in 2015 and said while it might seem
shocking, the statistics were encouraging. “Forty-one hours of peace is a huge deal in a city that loses people every 19 hours,”
said the 44-year-old, who grew up on these streets. “I go to about three or four funerals a year.”
She is convinced the weekend ceasefire, which she had been preparing for two months, saved at least two lives.
More importantly, she says, it helped the city experience what day-to-day life could be like.
“There is like a different energy that we created together,” she said.
Attorney-General Jeff Sessions said violent crime was up 22 per cent and murders up 78 per cent in 2016 as the city has been
plagued by racial tension and anger.
Last year was the second deadliest year in Baltimore, with 318 murders. It was second to 2015, where 344 murders occurred.
According to Baltimore city data, there were 211 killings recorded in 2014 and 233 recorded in 2013.
TENSIONS ON A KNIFE EDGE
There is little trust between residents and police as the city struggles with the aftermath of 2015 riots following the death of
Freddie Gray, 25. Gray suffered a fatal spine injury while being transported in the back of a police van with his hands and
feet bound.
In April, a federal judge required the Baltimore police to implement sweeping reforms. The Baltimore city government and police
agreed last year, but the administration of US President Donald Trump, promising to empower police to crack down on crime,
has sought to delay and modify the reforms.
The recent tension is part of a long history of high-profile crime. One of the city’s most notorious events occurred in 1968 when
four children under the age of 10 were found mutilated in the bushes inside Baltimore’s Leakin Park.
Larry, 9, and Matt Jefferson, 5, Louis Hill, 10, and Lester Watson, 10, were killed in the late 60s by janitor Reginald Vernon Oates,
18 in a horrifying crime with details to graphic to report.
INTERNATIONAL ATTENTION
The area’s grisly history was thrust into the international spotlight again in 2015 with the true-crime podcast Serial that investigated
the murder of Baltimore schoolgirl Hae Min Lee, who disappeared in January 1999. Her body was found in Leakin Park a month later.
Host Sarah Koenig, said in the show: “If you’re digging in Leakin Park to bury your body, you’re going to find somebody else’s”.
That followed another high-profile murder involving a man named Richard Nicolas and his daughter Aja.
He is now serving 20 years in a maximum-security prison for shooting and killing the two-year-old after picking him up from her mother’s
house in 1996. It was the first time they would spend an evening together alone, and Nicolas planned to take her to the local cinema in
Baltimore to watch Pinocchio. Instead, Aja was shot and killed.
Nicolas has always pleaded his innocence and said he was driving down a Baltimore road when a black car started following and
intimidating him. He claimed the car rammed his Chevrolet Cavalier and the driver shot his daughter and drove off.
For Bridgeford, who has lost “two or three” friends to shootings and had two of her three brothers shot, the ceasefire was a step in the
right direction towards eradicating gang violence, revenge killings, drug abuse and extreme poverty.
According to Fox News, police believe drugs and gangs are the reason for the high crime rate in Baltimore.
Director of anti-violence organisation Safe Streets, Gardnel Carter, said young people see their only escape in video games and
drugs including synthetic painkillers sold on prescription. “You got young and younger people hooked on them.
They walk around like zombies, on top of the mental health issues they are dealing with,” said Carter, who himself was imprisoned
for 20 years for murder.
It’s gotten so bad that authorities are now asking themselves keeping people with lesser offence behind bars longer “to save people
from themselves,” a spokesman for the Baltimore police, TJ Smith, told AFP.
“What we see is a lot of people who could be in jail if they had stiffer sentences and wouldn’t have been on the street at the time of
their demise,” Smith said.
More than 85 per cent of victims have a criminal record, he adds. For Smith, the ceasefire was “absolutely not a failure” because of
the conversation it helped trigger. Smith has become the public face of every new shootout, its victims and its perpetrators.
He will never forget the 173rd murder of 2017: his own brother, shot dead.
“For me to be on the victim side of this, of course it’s different,” he says. “Of course it hurts in a different way than talking about a
stranger at the podium.” “What we see is a lot of people who could be in jail if they had stiffer sentences and wouldn’t have been
on the street at the time of their demise,” Smith said.
More than 85 per cent of victims have a criminal record, he adds. For Smith, the ceasefire was “absolutely not a failure” because
of the conversation it helped trigger.
Smith has become the public face of every new shootout, its victims and its perpetrators. He will never forget the 173rd murder of
2017: his own brother, shot dead. “For me to be on the victim side of this, of course it’s different,” he says. “Of course it hurts in a
different way than talking about a stranger at the podium.”...'
Oh... I see.
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.
