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The Philadelphia Inquirer and their writers really hate it when the rule of law goes against their police-hating views

It is, of course, no surprise that most of the writers at The Philadelphia Inquirer hate the police. Columnist Helen Ubiñas, whose Twitter biography states that she is “a Latina columnist”, as though her ethnicity should make any difference, tweeted her great disappointment that former Philadelphia Police Officer Ryan Pownell should be reinstated, with back pay and restored seniority.

Fired Philly cop Ryan Pownall, whose murder case in controversial shooting was dismissed by judge, can get job back, arbitrator rules

The arbitrator also ruled that Pownall is also entitled to full back pay and seniority, the president of the police union said.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, April 25, 2024 | 8:56 PM EDT | Updated: 9:50 PM EDT

An arbitrator has ruled that the city must reinstate Ryan Pownall to his former job as a Philadelphia police officer — 1½ years after a judge dismissed criminal charges, including third-degree murder, that were filed against Pownall for the on-duty 2017 shooting death of David Jones.

Roosevelt Poplar, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, the union that represents Philadelphia police officers, said in a statement Thursday that the arbitrator ruled that Pownall was also entitled to full back pay and seniority.

The union “and fellow officers stood in solidarity with Pownall and his family throughout this entire ordeal. We’re happy to see Pownall reinstated to his job and he looks forward to protecting this great city,” Poplar said.

Last’s be clear about this: Mr Pownall is not guilty of any violation of the law, but somehow Miss Ubiñas doesn’t think that matters. This site has previously noted the dismissal of charges against Mr Pownall:

Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott said there were “so many things wrong” with how the District Attorney’s Office instructed grand jurors before they approved a presentment recommending murder charges in the landmark case.

In particular, McDermott said during a pretrial hearing, prosecutors had failed to provide the panel with information on how and when officers are legally justified in firing their weapons. “How could the grand jury do [its] job without knowing that?” she asked.

She chastised prosecutors for what she viewed as a series of other errors, saying that if a defense attorney had behaved in a similar fashion before her, “I would declare them incompetent.”

Of course, the city’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, and softer-than-Charmin-on-civilian-crime District Attorney, Larry Krasner, waxed wroth over the dismissal of all charges just because his minions had performed so terribly. From the first cited story:

Krasner indicated at the time that his office might refile charges against Pownall.

“This case is not over,” Krasner said in 2022 after the judge’s ruling.

Court records show that Pownall has no criminal charges pending.

I’ll make clear what the article mealy-mouthed: with 1½ years to work on it, the District Attorney’s Office has been unable to put together a case against Mr Pownall that would withstand legal scrutiny. The newspaper screams about the rule of law every time their columnists and editors mention Donald Trump, hoping for something, anything, which would prevent him from running in or, Heaven forfend! winning, the 2024 presidential campaign. Yet, when it comes to the rule of law where Mr Pownall is concerned, Miss Ubiñas is utterly appalled that a solid police officer who has not been convicted of any crime might get his job back, along with six years of back pay due to an improper dismissal.

I’d also point out here that the newspaper strongly supports trade unionism in the City of Brotherly Love, with one exception: they really, really hate the police officer’s union, the Fraternal Organization of Police Lodge #5, and particularly its past President, John McNesby, because the officers’ union did what unions are expected to do, and that’s defend union members.

Western civilization strongly depends upon law enforcement to maintain that civilized society, something which seems pretty strained in our major cities, especially Philadelphia, these days. That thin, blue line, which so many on the left hate these days, is all that stands between the law abiding and the barbarians. The Philadelphia Police even protect Helen Ubiñas, who hates them so much.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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Green virtue signaling Too bad that they don't know what they are talking about

Every so often I can see the virtue signaling of the environmentalists that just makes me laugh. Former Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) may have been totally inept at actually running the city, but he sure was great at getting a ‘sugary beverage tax’ passed, to fight obesity, don’t you know, that’s none of the city’s business. And even though he was fully in support of ‘my body, my choice’ when it came to women killing their yet-to-be-born children, he was adamant and aggressive in fighting the unions to get city employees who wanted to exercise bodily autonomy when it came to taking an experimental vaccine.

Then, about six years ago, in his effort to fight global warming climate change, he pushed a project to get solar power for electricity for city-owned buildings.

Philadelphia begins powering City Hall and the airport by a solar array 100 miles away

The project, begun nearly six years ago under former Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, began producing test power a few weeks ago from an array in Adams County.

by Frank Kummer | Friday, April 26, 2024 | 10:01 AM EDT

Philadelphia has begun pulling large amounts of power for city-owned buildings from a solar array on farmland near Gettysburg.

The project, begun nearly six years ago under former Mayor Jim Kenney, started producing electricity specifically for the city a few weeks ago in Adams County. It is expected to provide up to 25% of power consumed by municipal buildings, including City Hall, Philadelphia International Airport, and the water department.

Philly is under contract to purchase 70-megawatts of power annually from the array.

“We’re feeling great about this project,” said Dominic McGraw, Philadelphia’s deputy director of energy services. “It’s been a long time coming. We’re very excited to move forward.”

If you didn’t know any better, you might thing that there’s a high-power line directly from Energix Renewables (ENGR-TA) to City Hall, but that’s not how this works.

Under the arrangement, city-owned buildings will get power from the panels, although not directly. Rather, the array — the collection of solar panels — feeds to a substation that sends power to the regional grid operated by PJM, which coordinates electricity regionally across multiple states including Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The power is then delivered to Peco territory for use by Philadelphia.

The city owns about 600 buildings. It has a contract to buy solar-generated electricity for those buildings at $44.50 per megawatt hour for 20 years from Energix Renewables, the project’s developer. The rate was established when the project was proposed in 2018. The energy produced by the solar array is not meant to power any homes or businesses in the city.

Gaza Solidarity Encampment, April 25, 2024, via Daily Pennsylvanian., photo by Ethan Young. Click to enlarge.

Simply put, the sparktricity generated by Energix is simply dumped into the grid, and, as it happens everywhere else, it becomes part of the regional electric grid delivering power to anyplace connected to the grid. It’s not as though Energix, or anyone else, can tell individual electrons where to go! Pennsylvania leads the nation with sixteen coal-burning power plants, and I’d like to think that more of the power used by the city comes from Brunner Island, or Spring Grove, both in York County. That “The energy produced by the solar array is not meant to power any homes or businesses in the city” is meaningless in any practical or engineering sense.

But, even more amusingly, as the anti-Semitic, keffiyeh–wearing Usual Suspects have their thus-far peaceful campus protests at the University of Pennsylvania in support of Hamas, it turns out that the power the city is claiming comes from solar at Energix is coming from “the US subsidiary of an Israeli publicly traded company“. 🙂

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But, but, but, it’s just so unfair! Caitlin Clark's new endorsement deals are all about the Benjamins

Caitlin Clark was the top NCAA women’s basketball player this past season, and was the number one draft pick by the Indiana Fever. She was the major reason that the Iowa Hawkeyes’ women’s team got more coverage this year, and that the women’s tournament drew a lot more viewers than the norm. And, as her rookie season begins, the advance television schedule shows that the Indiana Fever will get a lot more national television coverage.

WNBA salaries are far lower than those of NBA players. That’s just so terribly unfair, the advocates scream, but the WNBA’s regular season of 40 games is less than half of the NBA’s 82 game schedule, and the women’s games draw far fewer fans in the stands.

You know who else doesn’t get paid as much as NBA players? National Hockey League players, because they just don’t have as sizable a fan base.

And now, in what the advocates see as the ultimate insult, Miss Clark, who is white, got a high value shoe contract:

The Caitlin Clark Effect and the uncomfortable truth behind it

by Jim Trotter | Thursday, April 25, 2024

It’s not surprising that corporations are lining up like fans along arena railings to get Caitlin Clark’s autograph. The former Iowa star is a transcendent talent who has proven she is as proficient at breaking viewership records as scoring marks, drawing capacity crowds at home and on the road and even attracting 17,000 spectators to an open practice during Final Four weekend. Her WNBA jersey sold out within hours of her being drafted No. 1 overall by the Indiana Fever, and multiple teams have moved upcoming games to larger venues to accommodate “unprecedented demand” for Fever games.

So, it makes perfect sense that she has been hired to pitch everything from home and auto insurance to performance drinks, from trading cards to supermarket chains, from automobiles to financial investment firms. She’s not only deserving of every opportunity but also has earned every endorsement deal that’s been placed before her, including a $28 million Nike pact that includes her own signature shoe line, as reported by The Athletic.

That being said, we should not delude ourselves into believing her appeal as an influencer is based solely on basketball, because it’s not. Arguing otherwise is an affront to history and reality. Clark’s attractiveness to local companies and national corporations is heightened by the fact that she is a White woman who has dominated a sport that’s viewed as predominately Black; a straight woman who is joining a league with a sizable LGBTQ+ player population; and a person who comes from America’s heartland, where residents often feel their beliefs and values are ignored or disrespected by the geographical edges of the country.

Because sport and society are constructed from the same fabric, it’s impossible to separate them, which is why it’s foolish to act as if basketball is the only thing fueling The Caitlin Clark Effect. The primary thing? Yes. But not the only thing.

There’s more at the original, and the article is also reproduced here, for those who don’t like The Athletic’s registration process to see the article.

But can we tell the truth here? If you look at the sports schedules on ESPN, you’ll see mostly men’s contests, but the women’s games you do see are mostly ice skating, NCAA gymnastics, and volleyball, and especially beach volleyball with the athletes wearing bikinis, with basketball very much behind. Why? Because the executives at ESPN understand their audience, and know that their mostly male viewership would rather see pretty white women! Hey, I’m a normal man: I’d rather look at pretty women than less attractive ones.

The shoe contract? The execs at Nike don’t really care about some sort of ‘equality’ in sports; they care about selling basketball shoes! And if the viewership for women’s basketball has been driven up by the success of a white player, they’re going to ride that success to what they hope will be selling more shoes.

The racial component when discussing brand ambassadors may make people uncomfortable, but it’s a conversation that merits consideration. Sue Bird, who is White and gay and one of the legends of women’s basketball, addressed it in 2020 while discussing the league’s inability at that time to capture the country’s attention in the same way that the U.S. women’s national soccer team had done.

“Even though we’re female athletes playing at a high level, our worlds, you know, the soccer world and the basketball world are just totally different,” she said. “And to be blunt it’s the demographic of who’s playing. Women’s soccer players generally are cute little white girls while WNBA players — we are all shapes and sizes … a lot of Black, gay, tall women. … There is maybe an intimidation factor and people are quick to judge it and put it down.”

Miss Bird might, just might, have left something out. Her ‘partner’ is now-retired soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who has a long history of far-left activism and has alienated many people. And in stressing that “Women’s soccer players generally are cute little white girls,” she’s telling you a lot about some WNBA players, who aren’t necessarily that physically attractive. Miss Bird and Miss Rapinoe also just led some 400 current and former women athletes who signed a letter to the NCAA urging the protection of ‘transgender’ athletes, allowing them to compete under the ‘gender’ with which they identify rather than their actual sex. I wonder how they’d have felt if Dennis Rodman decided that he identified as a woman and tried to join the WNBA?

You know who else has lost popularity due to activism? LeBron James, the greatest current NBA player, though clearly on the downside of his career.

The businesses which have signed deals with Miss Clark — and there haves been more than just Nike — all have one goal in mind, and that’s to make money. American consumers who are influenced by whether Miss Clark sports a specific shoe? They are free people, able to take their own decisions, for whatever reasons they have.
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Crazy people are dangerous #Transgender girl shows some toxic masculinity

Sometimes I worry that I am stepping on the toes of former Washington Times reporter and editor Robert Stacy McCain and his series entitled Crazy People Are Dangerous by using the title myself, but sometimes the crazy becomes too blatant to ignore. This site previously reported on the brutal assault by a 13-year-old boy claiming to be a girl on a 12-year-old girl at Pennbrook Middle School, and how the credentialed media are mostly keeping the fact that the alleged assailant is nuttier than a fruitcakesuffers from gender dysphoria.

I also noted, just before noon on Wednesday, that even though the assault was a week ago, not only have the credentialed media kept quiet about the allegation that ‘Melanie,’ the name the alleged assailant has chosen to use, is reported to be ‘transgender,’ but the media have not reported in anything I have seen any claims that the report of the alleged assailant’s ‘transgender’ status is false.

Well, now he’s getting worse:

Transgender student accused of beating preteen student attacked sheriff deputies at hearing

Tuesday, April 23, 2024 | 7:50 AM EDT

A Pennsylvania middle school student, a biological male who identified as a female and who is accused of beating a 12-year-old with a Stanley cup tumbler last week, allegedly attacked sheriff deputies at a hearing on Monday.

The act of violence allegedly came after a judge ruled that the student, who attends Pennbrook Middle School in the suburbs of Philadelphia, was to be held at the Montgomery County Youth Detention Center in Eagleville because of the violent attack at the school.

“The judge ordered that the juvenile be detained at the Youth Center,” Upper Gwynedd Police Chief David Duffy told the Washington Examiner in an email Monday night. “Upon hearing this, the juvenile grabbed a nearby water jug, swung it at sheriff’s deputies, and resisted being handcuffed.”

Perhaps, just perhaps, the wiser thing to do when you are facing the judge in a criminal matter is not to commit another criminal act in front of that judge. That ‘transgender girl’ sure was exhibiting some ‘toxic masculinity’ there, but, at 13-years-old, he would normally be right in the middle of male puberty, his system being flooded with testosterone, unless he is on some sort of medication which would prevent that.

Monday’s outburst came after the student attacked a seventh grader last week in the school cafeteria, which the Washington Examiner previously reported.

Video surveillance from that day showed the victim being attacked from behind and repeatedly hit in the back of the head with a Stanley cup tumbler. The attack left “blood everywhere,” according to one student.

“I was in lunch, and all of the sudden, I hear all of this screaming and everybody running,” Emily, a student, said at a school board hearing last Thursday. “I see Mel running in after somebody, and everyone’s screaming and running.”

That statement would seem to confirm other reports that the alleged assailant was using the name “Melanie.”

Law enforcement officers and school district administration officials identified the victim as a girl but refused to specify whether the attacker was male or female. The assailant was later identified as a transgender student by parents and other adults who spoke at a school board hearing after the attack.

That ‘Melanie’ is really a boy seems to have been widely known at the school.

There’s more at the original, but, other than the original report on Monday by reporter Maddie Hanna, The Philadelphia Inquirer has had no follow-up on a story, at least as of 9:29 PM EDT on Wednesday, that has received some national attention. Montgomery County is directly adjacent to Philadelphia, and the Inky is supposed to be the area’s ‘newspaper of record.’

The credentialed media are declining to publish the names of either the alleged assailant or his victim, because both are minors. At just 13-years-old, it’s almost certain that ‘Melanie’ will not be charged as an adult, and while he might spend some time in juvenile detention, he’ll be out more probably sooner than later. But what he really needs is some serious mental help, because for whatever reasons exist, he is not coping well in life.

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right Progressives are complaining that more conservative policies won’t work, when progressive policies have already failed

Albert Einstein supposedly said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Perhaps relying on a misunderstanding of Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the progressive left can hold that if they just keep doing the same thing — albeit spending more of Other People’s Money while doing so — their oh-so-noble policies will work where they haven’t worked before. The progressive left are complaining that more conservative urban policies won’t work, but they are being implemented because liberal and progressive policies didn’t work! Continue reading →

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Crazy people are dangerous Always note what the media are telling you, and what they are not

The in-school assault was serious enough that several credentialed media sources reported on it, and how the school was warned, in advance, that the attack would occur, and did nothing.

But you know what all of the media sources I linked did not mention? It has been reported by the Daily Mail that the assailant was not a real girl, but a boy self-identifying as a girl: Continue reading →

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Why does The Philadelphia Inquirer, which won’t publish mugshots of real criminals, make deliberate exceptions for police officers convicted of crimes?

We have previously covered the death of 12-year-old Thomas “TJ” Siderio, sent to his eternal reward after he shot at police. Naturally, then-Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw suspended and then fired Police Officer Edsaul Mendoza, and, despite the Commissioner declining to publicly name the officer, for his safety, The Philadelphia Inquirer ferreted out his name and published it. Naturally, the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner charged Officer Mendoza with among other things, first degree murder and third-degree murder. Now, two years later, Mr Mendoza has pleaded guilty of doing his job:

Former Philly cop who shot and killed 12-year-old T.J. Siderio pleads guilty to third-degree murder

Edsaul Mendoza was charged with murder two months after the shooting in March 2022.

by Rodrigo Torrejón and Ellie Rushing | Friday, April 19, 2024 | 12:36 PM EDT

Edsaul Mendoza, the former Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Thomas “T.J.” Siderio in South Philadelphia more than two years ago, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder on Friday — becoming the first city officer in recent history to face conviction for murder related to a fatal on-duty shooting.

Mendoza, 28, was charged with first-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter after prosecutors said he chased T.J., then shot him in the back at near point-blank range after the boy tossed away a gun he had been carrying. The March 2022 shooting made T.J. the youngest person ever killed by a city police officer.

Mendoza’s plea marked only the second time a Philadelphia police officer has been convicted of a fatal shooting in recent years, and the first to be convicted of murder. Former police officer Eric Ruch was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter for shooting Dennis Plowden Jr., who was unarmed, after a car chase in 2017 and was sentenced to 11 ½ to 23 months in prison.

I have noted dozens of times that the Inquirer does not publish mugshots of accused or even convicted criminals, and I frequently have to do further online searches to find the mugshots I do publish. But the photo above? The newspaper was certainly willing to ignore its previous policies and publish Mr Mendoza’s photo. I screen captured it from the Inky’s online story at 4:08 PM EDT today. The newspaper did the same thing in the case of former Officer Eric Ruch.

Under Title 18 §106(b)(2) a crime is a felony in the first degree if the sentence thereto can exceed ten years, and for third degree murder maxes out at 40 years. Though the story does not indicate that there was a plea deal in place, my guess is that there was, and Mr Mendoza will receive a far more lenient sentence., perhaps similar to Mr Ruch’s 11½-to-23-month sentence, and much of that might already have been served. I hope that he’s out of jail soon.

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Crazy people are dangerous Whenever there is a truth that you cannot tell, that is a truth you must tell!

My very good friends on the left used to love, when presented with a fact which challenged their assertions, to use the expression, “The plural of anecdote is not data.” I, of course, pointed out that an ‘anecdote,’ if confirmed, actually is a datum. A few years ago, Barry Ritholtz writing in The Big Picture, reported:

Which brings us back to anecdotes: As it turns out, the original quote about anecdotes had a very different context, and a much more nuanced meaning. It is attributed to Ray Wolfinger, who was a political scientist at the University of California-Berkeley.

Wolfinger’s original statement was quite literally the very opposite of what we all have been using. He had actually said “the plural of anecdote is data.” This should affect the way we think about and use data.

Mr Ritholtz noted the problem of selection bias. Yes, he used as an example, shark attacks are dangerous, and frequently lethal, but the vast majority of interactions between humans and sharks do not result in sharks attacking humans. I am reminded of General ‘Buck’ Turgidson’s statement in Dr Strangelove, “I don’t think it’s fair to condemn the whole program due to a single slip-up.” And that leads me to the obvious question: just how many of these data points does it take to destroy the narrative? Continue reading →

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Volunteer firemen run toward the fire when others run away, and they take action while others just take pictures with their cell phones.

From Wikipedia:

In the military, a political commissar or political officer (or politruk, a portmanteau word from Russian: политический руководитель, romanized: politicheskiy rukovoditel; transl. political leader or political instructor) is a supervisory officer responsible for the political education (ideology) and organization of the unit to which they are assigned, with the intention of ensuring political control of the military.

The function first appeared as commissaire politique (political commissioner) or représentant en mission (representative on mission) in the French Revolutionary Army during the French Revolution (1789–1799). Political commissars were heavily used within the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). They also existed, with interruptions, in the Soviet Red Army from 1918 to 1991, as well as in the armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1943 to 1945 as Nationalsozialistische Führungsoffiziere (national socialist leadership officers).

Being associated with such militaries, perhaps the concept of a political officer isn’t one which should be admired in a free republic like the United States, and you’d certainly think that such a thing would be a concern for a volunteer fire department. But, if you thought such a thing, you’d be wrong. Continue reading →