Chicago epitomized the Democrat Death Spiral when it crossed the Rubicon by electing leftist maniac Brandon Johnson. Allysia Finley explains how the DDS works:

Chicago is functionally bankrupt. Its high crime and taxes are driving away businesses like Citadel, Boeing and Tyson Foods. Despite some of the highest property taxes in the country, its pension funds are in a death spiral. Scads of people are moving out. A net 175,000 people left Cook County between 2020 and 2022.

Mr. Johnson’s margin of victory was about 20,000 votes. How many of the city’s expats would have voted for moderate reformer Paul Vallas? Therein lies an enormous problem for Chicago and other big cities: Left-wing policies are driving away the types of voters and businesses needed for a course correction.

Voters start by electing relatively moderate Democrats, but as the inevitable consequences of Democrat policies drive out hard-working and law-abiding voters, people like Vallas become unelectable because they are not irresponsible enough the please the remaining population. Consequently,

America’s big cities are increasingly steered by the interests of government unions and those who depend on the government dole.

As the last regular people run screaming from Chicago, Democrats will come up with a candidate to the left even of Brandon Johnson, who successfully ran on a platform of enabling criminals, demonizing the police, and jacking taxes ever farther into the stratosphere. That candidate will displace the relatively moderate Johnson, assuming there is anything left of the city but a smoking ruin.

Democrats have settled on Chicago for their 2024 convention. You can see why.

On a tip from Varla.

There appears to be no escape from the Democrat Death Spiral. This vicious cycle occurs when high taxes and social decay inevitably resulting from Democrat rule drive sane people out of a jurisdiction, resulting in ever greater margins of victory for Democrats, resulting in ever more destructive radicalism, driving out still more sane people. The Democrat Death Spiral reduced Detroit (formerly the wealthiest city in America) to the rotting pustule of poverty and dysfunction we know today. There was a moment of hope when radical leftist Lori Lightfoot — a catastrophic failure whose only qualifications were being an ultraleft Lesbian of Color — was voted out of the mayor’s office in Chicago. But no; the cycle spins ever deeper down the maelstrom of moonbattery. Voters chose someone even worse than Lightfoot:

Brandon Johnson, the far-left, self-professed “progressive” candidate who ran on a plan to defund the Chicago Police and raise the city’s taxes, has won his runoff campaign for mayor of Chicago.

This being single-party Chicago, his opponent was another Democrat. But Paul Vallas did not run on a platform of wanting to burn down the city on behalf of Black Lives Matter.

Vallas ran as a business-friendly, law-and-order candidate while Johnson, who is black, ran a brutal campaign calling Vallas a racist who is “really a Republican.”

True enough, at this point anyone to the right of all the way left is really a Republican — or soon will be.

ZeroHedge is appalled:

To reduce Chicago’s nation-high homicide rate, Chicago needed a new mayor willing to take on Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s unwillingness to prosecute dangerous criminals. A mayor willing to challenge Judge Tim Evans’ decarcerationist agenda. A mayor willing to jam shut the system’s revolving door for criminals.

That won’t be Johnson, who dwells as deep in the leftist fever swamp as Soros stooge Kim Foxx.

To improve Chicago’s dismal educational outcomes – only 1 in 20 black students at CPS can do math at grade level – the city needed a new mayor to champion math and reading proficiency as well as educational excellence, merit and achievement.

That won’t be Johnson either:

Johnson has already said that as a teacher he pushed to eliminate standards, stopped giving homework, and reduced test prep as a way of “rebelling against the structure.” For him, the concept of “equity,” not excellence, will dominate, and kids will lose.

Even the godawful Lori Lightfoot showed some willingness (although not enough) to stand up to the teachers union that has destroyed Chicago schools. Johnson is on the union team, with zero regard for the future.

And as for the city’s economic climate and business friendliness, Chicago needed a new mayor who would make the city affordable again by growing the tax base, not the tax rate.

In contrast, Johnson…

…promised to target businesses and the wealthy to pay for his social programming.

If you live in Chicago, get out now. The city has been lost to liberalism, and will soon be as uninhabitable as Detroit. America’s erstwhile Second City will exist only as a black hole sucking in taxpayer money and a powerbase for the cancerous Democratic Party.

On tips from ABC of the ANC, Gringoman, Dr. Kufi Tutite, and Varla.

As celebrated earlier, Lori Lightfoot, a walking parody of moonbattery, has blessedly been voted out of office. Journalist William J. Kelly steps forward to sum up her legacy for the public record while helping her out the door with a well-earned kick to the seat of her pants:

Kelly says, “Future historians are going to have a hard time understanding how you ever even became mayor of the city of Chicago.” Here’s how: she is a left-wing Lesbian of Color. No further qualifications are required under cultural Marxism, as the comparably incompetent Karine Jean-Pierre can attest.

On a tip from Jack D.

Maybe we have reached maximum moonbattery; maybe now, we begin to turn back from the abyss of insanity that has been institutionalized by the Democratic Party. Even dysfunctional Chicago knew better than to reelect the catastrophically awful Lori Lightfoot:

Lightfoot, the first black woman and openly gay mayor of the Windy City, is now also the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose a re-election after trailing behind in third place with only 17.1 percent of votes as of Wednesday morning.

Lightfoot does not like the country that let her be mayor of the third largest city:

Following her concession speech, a reporter asked her if she was treated unfairly because of her race and gender, with Lightfoot answering: ‘I’m a black woman in America. Of course.’

Lightfoot steadfastly refused to take any responsibility for her incompetence, barking that “99 percent” of criticism directed against her was for being a black woman.

Even if being a black lesbian got her into power, it couldn’t keep her there with a record like this:

[T]here was a 59 percent increase in murder citywide when comparing the 9th week of 2023 to the same time-period four years ago, which is right when Lightfoot was heading to a runoff with Toni Preckwinkle.

The four-year change also shows a 27 percent increase in robbery, 31 percent increase in theft and a massive 270 percent increase in the number of motor vehicle thefts.

Lightfoot will be remembered not only for skyrocketing crime and for taking identity politics to the last extreme of absurdity, but for killing the Magnificent Mile:

Huge brands like Macy’s, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Gap, Uniqlo and Timberland have all fled large premises since Covid shutdowns and ensuing riots.

Lightfoot stoked the riots by siding with Black Lives Matter and shrieking for the police to be defunded.

Many were driven away by soaring crime and violence, with the vacancy rate on the once tony shopping strip rising 10-fold since 2016, when it sat at just 3.6 percent, to the current 30.1 percent vacancy rate.

Maybe with her gone, flagship stores will dare to return.

Now for the bad news. The Democrat Death Spiral has hit rock bottom in Chicago. Anyone not content to live under Democrat rule bailed out decades ago. That means there is no competition for the Democratic Party and no chance of responsible leadership.

But at least watching Lightfoot crash and burn might inspire her successor to lighten up on the radicalism.

On tips from Varla, Anonymous, and Ed McAninch.

No wonder people are escaping in droves from Democrat-dominated states like California, New York, and Illinois. Even as crime remains out of control in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter, liberals double down on marginalizing police and facilitating lawlessness. Deep blue Illinois has just jumped off a cliff by putting into force the dementedly pro-criminal SAFE-T Act.

The elimination of cash bail as in New York was held up for now by a judge, but the rest went into effect Sunday. Aspects include…

…limiting when defendants can be deemed flight risks, allowing defendants under electronic monitoring to leave home for 48 hours before they can be charged with escape, and preventing police from arresting non-violent trespassers…

You thought Chicago could not get any worse? Democrats can make anything worse.

Critics say that the new measures will handcuff police and increase crime by releasing criminals with tickets rather than arresting them for certain crimes.

Democrats have been generating violent anarchy on purpose. Their #1 donor, ahead of even Sam Bankman-Fried, is George Soros, who has spent $millions installing pro-criminal DAs along the lines of Alvin Bragg (New York), George Gascon (Los Angeles), Kim Foxx (Chicago), Kim Ogg (Houston), Larry Krasner (Philadelphia), Chesa Boudin (San Francisco), and Kim Gardner (St Louis). The resulting explosion in crime was clearly premeditated.

The new law also allows for anonymous misconduct complaints against police officers when in the past officers were able to know the identity of the person accusing them.

The effect on morale, recruitment, and retention of police officers will be as intended, resulting in fewer and lower quality cops.

“When I said that this is the most dangerous law I’ve ever seen, I believe that,” Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau told Fox News.

The Most Dangerous Law is also known as the Purge Law, in reference to the movies/TV series about crime being made legal for 12 hours once a year to keep the population down. In Illinois, the Purge will take place all year around, until the population disappears completely. This is the fate of every state that succumbs to the Democrat Death Spiral, whereby Democrats drive out sane people, resulting in ever more radical Democrats getting elected.

Progressives have no fear that voters will hold them responsible for the crime they create. It occurs mainly among constituencies that have already succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral, where there is no chance of anyone but Democrats winning elections.

To grasp their motive, consider that there are two major impediments to the liberal agenda: the First Amendment (which they have been taking a sledgehammer to) and the Second Amendment.

When hamstringing police results in violent crime, the solution is to disarm law-abiding citizens. If that sounds insane to you, congratulations on not being a Democrat.

On tips from Varla and Occam’s Stubble.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC. Hat tip: Not the Bee.

Despite the preposterous claim by Kamala Harris that the southern border is secure, millions of colonists from the Third World have been pouring over it at will, due to the refusal by Democrats to secure it. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has made a point by sending a tiny fraction of the illegal aliens to the sanctuary city Chicago — where their welcome was short-lived.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot criticized Abbott for sending them, even questioning his Christian faith. However, at first she welcomed the invaders:

“This is such an important moment for Chicago as our city has been a sanctuary for thousands of newcomers. We are welcoming them and we will not turn our backs on those who need our help the most,” Lightfoot said in a statement, according to WMAQ-TV.

She denounced Texas for not keeping her informed:

“If you don’t want these folks to stay in Texas, then make sure that you collaborate with the cities before you put them on buses so that we can be here and make sure that our services are welcoming.”

A few days later Lightfoot dumped the undocumented Democrats on suburban Burr Ridge without notifying local authorities, leaving Mayor Gary Grasso to fume,

“This is hundreds of people in a city of millions. Why are they sending them out to the Republican suburbs? You have to wonder.”

Actually, you don’t have to wonder. The point of importing millions of illegal aliens is to turn Republican districts blue by creating a massive, unassimilable, handout-dependent underclass. Chicago is already blue. The illegals have to be properly disseminated if the whole country is to look like Chicago.

On a tip from Blackjack.

If black men have to live in terror of the police, imagine what it is like for black women, who according to the intersectional ideology of our intelligentsia are even more oppressed. The video below provides an indication.

In broad daylight, as we have come to expect:

Welcome to Chicago under the moonbat rule of Lori Lightfoot.

Those with the belly for it can watch the whole scene:

Small wonder if cities where authorities side with criminals against the police have a hard time recruiting officers.

If we are not able to pry liberals out of power and reverse the decay they have caused before the collapse of civilization goes much further, America will inevitably find itself invaded by a healthier society, if only so that our natural resources are not wasted. Whoever our conquerors turn out to be, they will be welcomed as liberators, because at least they won’t be liberals.

On a tip from Wiggins. Hat tip: Citizen Free Press.

Unless this is all some grotesque nightmare, moonbattery has reduced us to the point where we are actually ruled by freaks like Lori Lightfoot, who took a few moments off from plunging Chicago ever deeper into violent chaos to post a video with her “wife,” wishing us a “joyous Kwanzaa”:

The response on Twitter to this call for us to embrace the seven principles of Kwanzaa was not enthusiastic:

Actually, the seven principles are identical to those of the Symbionese Liberation Army, which is best known for kidnapping heiress Patty Hearst, brainwashing her, and converting her into a bank-robbing Marxist guerilla.

Kwanzaa is a contrived black supremacist/socialist holiday invented in 1966 by California State black studies professor Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga (a.k.a. Ronald Everett) as a moonbat alternative to Christmas.

Background on Karenga:

Karenga was convicted in 1971 for brutally torturing two naked women. The weapons of torture included a soldering iron, a vise and, of course, a toaster.

The toaster was used to beat the women over the head.

The women were members of Karenga’s ultra-radical, paramilitary, black nationalist cult called the US Organization, which went by the acronym US, according to contemporaneous news stories.

The women were held at gunpoint. Karenga put a hot soldering iron in one woman’s mouth. The other woman had her toes squeezed in a vice.

A psychiatrist asked to evaluate Karenga found him to be “both paranoid and schizophrenic.”

Christmas has Jesus Christ. Kwanzaa has Maulana Karenga.

Kwanzaa is to holidays what Black Lives Matter riots are to legitimate protests. Both are contrived and promoted by the liberal establishment. Both are grounded in the same ideology and express the same savage, sociopathic mindset.

Lori Lightfoot opened the gates of hell by throwing in with the antipolice movement on behalf of BLM, even proposing an $80 million cut to the police budget. Now she can’t get the gates closed again. It is fitting that she should celebrate Kwanzaa as Chicago continues to circle the drain.

On a tip from Scott L.

Abolishing local police, as Democrats tried to do during the Black Lives Matter riots, has not worked out for them politically, because the public has not reacted favorably to the inevitably resulting explosion in violent crime. So until all police can be federalized, liberals will make do with purging police forces of anyone suspected of holding right-of-center political views.

From a crime-ridden Democrat-dominated hellhole, via Fox News:

The Chicago Police Department is conducting an internal investigation into a sergeant who voiced her support for the formation of a Turning Point USA chapter at an area high school.

TPUSA is not exactly an alt right fever swamp. It represents a moderate conservative viewpoint that appeals to students.

Chicago Police Department Sergeant Ammie Kessem, who’s also the 41st Ward Republican Committeeman in Chicago, voiced her support for the potential creation of a TPUSA chapter at William Howard Taft High School in Chicago on Dec. 9, stating on Facebook that several “brave students” are creating the high school chapter of the conservative group.

The leftists in charge have proven just how brave these students are by targeting Officer Kessem.

Kessem went on to say that conservatives in Chicago are often called “Nazis,” “White Supremists” and “outright ‘racists.’”

Worse yet, they are intimidated with investigations and their careers are often ruined. How else is the liberal establishment to maintain its iron grip on a city where the ideology it wants to impose has so conspicuously failed?

“I am certain these students realize that this will almost certainly be scrutinized by the administration at this school which seems to embrace the Marxist views of a substantial amount of the Chicago Teacher’s union members,” she continued.

These Marxist views — or at least the authoritarian tactics associated with them — are also embraced by the Chicago PD under ultraleft Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The department did not inform Kessem of its investigation into her Facebook post, which she made in her capacity as a private American citizen who presumably enjoys First Amendment rights.

Meanwhile, at the school:

“We were disturbed to learn that an organization promoting racial intolerance has been associated with our school,” [Assistant Principal Melissa] Hess tweeted. “We are a community built on respect and inclusion, and one that rejects any organization that would seek to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or anything else. … Please know that the staff and administration at Taft will never tolerate the formation of any group that does not support these values.”

Although TPUSA was not named directly — and is not racist, Islamophobic, sexist, et cetera, ad nauseam — it appears to be the target of this ominous rhetoric. Tolerant liberals never tolerate those they have denounced as intolerant.

On a tip from Wiggins.

The leftists running Chicago public schools found a way to make the bathrooms even more dangerous for children. As of December 1, all schools are required to post signage stating that anyone can use whichever restroom they please, without respect for the privacy of members of the opposite sex.

Via Fox 32:

“This is a big step forward for gender equity for our students and staff,” CPS said in a tweet.

When you hear the word “equity,” civilization is under attack.

The district’s Office of Student Protections and Title IX will also working to create a long term plan to make the signage more permanent.

Once left-wing social engineers have perfected something, we must never be allowed to turn back.

Examples of the signs to be displayed include the sentence, “All who feel comfortable are welcome to use this restroom.” Not many girls will feel comfortable about boys invading their private facilities. No matter; the comfort of normal people is irrelevant. Only those who exhibit the deviant behavior encouraged by liberals matter.

This comes in the aftermath of a 14-year-old girl being raped in a restroom in Loudoun County by a boy dressed in a skirt who exploited the inclusive equity of liberal restroom policy. Her father was arrested for complaining about it at a school board meeting. Such parents have been characterized as terrorists by the Biden Regime.

Students learn critical race theory and knife fighting in Chicago public schools, but little else. Performance on standardized tests is so dismal that educrats are discarding them. Many of the kids who graduate will require remedial instruction at the college level to learn how to read.

Rather than make even a token effort to improve the failing though outlandishly expensive schools, the Democrats who run them double down on social engineering objectives certain to make them even more chaotic.

Children should never be consigned to the clutches of these malevolent lunatics:

On a tip from Chuck A.

Why go on a boring vacation when you could visit Chicago? Because of the city’s demographics and single-party Democrat rule, a trip to Chicago is like time traveling into the near future of the country as a whole — assuming that America does not radically change course.

Fox 32 reports that this happened in the River North neighborhood late Friday night, on State Street near Kinzie.

Here’s what American culture has been replaced with:

At one point, as the victims are laying in the street, some women block traffic just a few feet away so they can twerk.

They demonize, defund, demoralize, and hamstring the police, and let criminals out of jail. The inevitable result can be seen in the video above.

Next, they plan to disarm us so that we cannot defend ourselves. You could almost get the impression that Democrats do not mean us well.

On tips from Sean C and Wiggins.

The blizzard of COVID-19 spending will extend for years into the future, long after the disease should be behind us. Bureaucrats have not even been able to spend the money that has already been appropriated, yet Democrats feel the need to appropriate $1.9 trillion more. What exactly is the money for? The short answer is: whatever. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is spending a few hundred $million of it on the police.

She must be getting tired of the skyrocketing crime resulting from Black Lives Matter mania. From the Chicago Tribune:

Lightfoot’s administration spent $281.5 million in federal COVID-19 relief money on Chicago Police Department personnel costs, prompting an angry response Wednesday from activists and some aldermen.

How dare she spend the coronavirus cash on law enforcement when no doubt there are countless other things having little to do with the virus that local pols want it spent on?

The number came to light as Lightfoot seeks City Council approval to transfer about $65 million in unspent federal COVID-19 money into the 2021 budget, after the Biden administration waived Federal Emergency Management Agency local funding matches and extended the deadline to spend federal dollars until the end of the year.

It takes time to unload all the money he plans to hand out.

The city received about $1.2 billion from the federal government to help plug COVID-19 budget holes and defray additional costs as the city’s economy cratered during the early months of the pandemic.

Money is fungible. The cash Washington has been flinging to the four winds will plug all sorts of holes in the budgets of jurisdictions that have been governed irresponsibly. Those jurisdictions that have been governed responsibly will pick up the tab. That’s how things work with liberal politics.

On a tip from R F.

Even if civilization has been collapsing all around us, there is no reason to worry, because under Democrats, Big Government will keep us safe. An example from single-party Chicago:

Chicago Alderman Stephanie Coleman reacted to a surge in city carjackings by hiring a private firm to provide security for an hour each day in which residents can safely pump gas.

The project is called “Operation Safe Pump.”

This is of course only a temporary measure. We don’t want to rely on private firms. Maybe the federal government could start a new Department of Gas Pump Security to place armed guards at pumps throughout the country, at least until fossil fuels have been abolished. That would provide job opportunities for the thousands in the energy sector who have already been thrown out of work by Biden’s executive orders. After all, not all of them will want to immigrate to communist China so as to follow John Kerry’s advice and make solar panels for a living.

The Black Lives Matter–driven War on Police has had a predictable effect on public safety:

Carjackings in 2020 were up 135 percent over 2019. Breitbart News reported that a December 3, 2020, carjacking resulted in the fatal shooting of retired Chicago Firefighter Dwain Williams.

There have already been “at least” 166 Chicago carjackings in 2021, including the alleged carjacking of an off-duty Chicago Police Officer’s car on Tuesday.

We will catch up to South Africa in no time, even in terms of carjacking.

You can see why Democrats are planning to phase out private gun ownership for law-abiding citizens. We won’t need guns to defend ourselves, with armed agents of the state watching over every gas pump.

On a tip from Stormfax. Hat tip: Conservative Playlist.