Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Have Pope Francis and Cardinal Wilton Gregory forgotten the duty of pastoral care?

I have said it many times before: no priest, no bishop, and no pope, should ever want fewer Masses said, and fewer parishioners in the pews.

But, alas! what seems to me to be so very obvious is not that obvious to His Holiness Pope Francis, and to some of the bishops.

Catholics in D.C. mourn loss of Latin Mass after decree bans practice

by William Wan | Sunday, July 24, 2022 | 4:23 PM EDT

Standing before his parishioners holding the sacred bread of Communion in his hands, Father Vincent De Rosa, the pastor of St. Mary Mother of God Parish, solemnly intoned in Latin, “Ecce Agnus Dei.”

The English translation of those words: Behold the lamb of God.

Those kneeling in the church responded with ancient words of their own, “Domine, non sum dignus.” Lord, I am not worthy.

An air of earnest contemplation hung over Sunday Mass, tinged by sadness.

This would be one of the last weeks the church’s parishioners would be able to celebrate using a traditional Latin form that traces its roots back more than a millennium.

Last year, prompted by ideological wars between conservative and liberal wings, Pope Francis said he wanted to limit use of the old Latin form of Mass.

This week, the consequences of that papal letter — issued halfway across the world — landed here in Washington with heavy consequences for this small parish in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood.

By Sept. 21, the parish was told, they were to cease use of the Latin rituals that had been part of St. Mary’s history almost since its founding in 1845.

There’s a good deal more, and for those who would be stopped by The Washington Post’s paywall, the article can be found here for free. But now, I’ll jump to the final three paragraphs:

De Rosa urged this flock to cling to truth, unity and their faith throughout the seismic changes to come for their parish.

Roughly 60 percent of the church’s collection money comes from parishioners who attend its 9 a.m. Latin mass on Sundays, said Sylvester Giustino, who serves on the parish finance council.

“I do worry about our parish and what happens in September,” he said. “I’m planning to stay. St. Mary has become a home to me. But for others who leave, I can understand that too. We’re not just losing the Latin Mass. We are going to be losing a lot of families and people who have been part of this community for years.”

A photo accompanying the article showed the church about half full for the 9:00 AM Tridentine Mass, and the parishioners neatly dressed, perhaps more neatly than in many other Novus ordo[1]New order Masses, those held in the vernacular, or local languages. masses. More than half of St Mary’s offerings come from that Mass, and while the article does not tell us that the vernacular Masses at St Mary’s are either better or worse attended, it seems that many of the Latin Mass parishioners are serious Catholics.

Why, then, would Wilton Cardinal Gregory, the Archbishop of Washington, want to alienate those Catholics? Some will, undoubtedly, attend the Novus ordo Masses offered, but it is also true that some will not. The Cardinal’s order does not affect three non-diocesan parishes, where the Tridentine Mass can continue in use, and perhaps some of the Latin Mass adherents will travel to one of those.

This is the Bible I have at home. Bought in 1977 or 1978, the binding is broken and the cover and pages show wear.

But some will not.

At home, my copy of the Bible is a New American Catholic Bible, a thorough retranslation from the most original manuscripts that could be found. The use of modern English makes it easier for someone who speaks modern English to understand.

But many Christians today, Catholic and Protestant alike, appreciate the Douay-Rheims and the King James Bibles, because there’s something about the Elizabethan era early modern English used which conveys a greater sense of nobility, of the grandeur of God. I certainly cannot testify to it, but I have to wonder: do the Catholics who prefer the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass do so because of a greater sense of grandeur?

There has been no suggestion, anywhere, not even by Pope Francis, that the Tridentine Mass is somehow doctrinally or spiritually invalid, and Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that in Summorum Pontificum, Article 1. Pope Francis, opposed as he is to the use of the Tridentine Mass, has allowed it to continue, though under far greater restrictions; that, alone, confirms that he has not attempted to invalidate the Traditional Latin Mass.

So, why restrict it at all?

The answer is not religious, but political. More conservative factions within the Church just don’t like Pope Francis’ liberalization moves, and far, far, far too many bishops, including The Most Reverend John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington, have been ignoring the biblical condemnation of homosexual behavior in favor of allowing various parishes, such as St Paul’s in Lexington, and His Holiness the Pope has used the restrictions on the Tridentine Mass as a weapon against the conservatives. Fewer Latin Masses means fewer conservative Catholics in the pews.

But that logic is silly. I attend a Novus ordo Mass, and always have. It has been less of a choice than it might have been, in that I haven’t lived anywhere near a parish which offered a Latin Mass, but even though I attend a Novus ordo Mass and parish, I’m as conservative a Catholic as there is. The real issue, to me, is that His Holiness the Pope is, in effect, kicking some Catholics out of the Church. Those who attend the Tridentine Mass are making more of a sacrifice to attend Mass: they are having to learn ritual responses not in their native language, and are frequently having to travel further[2]For me, that would be a journey of 70 miles. to attend Mass.

Some will move over and attend a vernacular Mass, and some will travel further to find a Tridentine Mass. But it is inevitable that some will attend Mass less frequently, and some may wind up staying away from church completely. Driving away parishioners is not good pastoral care.

References

References
↑1 New order Masses, those held in the vernacular, or local languages.
↑2 For me, that would be a journey of 70 miles.
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The poor Special Snowflakes™ are getting their precious little feelings hurt!

We have previously noted how today’s left, who in past years were the most vociferous defenders of absolute freedom of speech, have now gone in very much the opposite direction. The New York Times and The Washington Post went to court in 1971 to fight President Richard Nixon’s attempts to prevent publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, winning their case  in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

Well, that was then, and this is now. One of the Times Editorial Board members, Greg Bensinger, opined that Twitter under Elon Musk will be a scary place, because, Heaven forfend! it might allow Donald Trump back on the platform, and that:

central to (Mr Musk’s) vision for the service is for it to be an “inclusive arena for free speech,” but users should understand what that phrase means: It means free speech for people like Mr. Musk, a billionaire and the world’s richest man. Even as Twitter’s board on Monday was debating his offer of $54.20 per share, which it accepted, Mr. Musk was setting the tone for his leadership by tweeting that Securities and Exchange Commission officials were “shameless puppets.”

Loosening content moderation, as Mr. Musk appears poised to do, won’t make Twitter a better place; that will make it far more toxic. Under the notion that more speech is the best antidote to harmful speech, earnest users can probably expect to be shouted down even more frequently by trolls and bots. (I am hopeful Mr. Musk was serious when he said he’ll “defeat the spam bots or die trying!”)

Female Twitter users, in particular, ought to worry about whether Mr. Musk will bring his apparent disdain for women to the company he is about to own. Twitter is already a toxic place for women who use it, particularly those of color.

This was hardly the first time that the Times, that staunch defender of freedom of speech and of the press when it comes to their First Amendment rights, has wanted them stifled when it came to other people. The Times also gave major OpEd space to Andrew Marantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker, to tell us that Free Speech Is Killing Us, and to Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a male who thinks he is a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy. to tell us How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.

It’s not just the Times. From Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion:

Twitter to Ban Use of ‘Groomers’ After Pressure From Liberal Outrage Mongers

“Right-wing users have spent months targeting LGBTQ users on Twitter with offensive accusations of ‘grooming,’ contributing to a climate of harassment and violence,” Media Matters alleged in an article demanding that Twitter take action.

Posted by Stacey Matthews | Saturday, July 23, 2022 | 2:00 PM EDT

Since leftists control most popular social media platforms, when their woke acolytes demand they get more aggressive with the thought and speech policing of conservatives, those platforms respond accordingly by tightening the reins and dropping the hammer on the allegedly offensive accounts, often on the ones that are influential and have large followings.

Such was the case earlier this week thanks in part to an aggressive online campaign started by the left-wing frauds at Media Matters for America (MMFA) and inspired by earlier actions taken by Reddit to crack down on the use of the word “groomers” when it is being used to describe, well, people who sound an awful lot like groomers.

According to Media Matters, allegations of grooming against educators—especially those who are using platforms like TikTok to openly brag about indoctrinating children with LGBTQ-themed sexualized content—by popular Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok and ConceptualJames have led to a rise in violence against members of the LGBTQ community because according to them, “groomers” is a “slur” and code-word used by the right “to brand gay and transgender people as child molesters, evoking an earlier era of homophobia.”

There’s more at Miss Matthews’ original.

Let’s face it: the left are getting their precious little feelings hurt when conservatives do something really radical like tell the truth.

An obvious question: if Twitter is going to ban the use of the word Groomer — and the hashtag #Groomers is still up on Twitter — why wouldn’t Twitter similarly ban calling other people misogynist or homophobes or transphobes? The answer is obvious: Twitter’s leadership actively supports the homosexual and transgender agenda! Twitter, and as we noted on Saturday, the Associated Press, want to force debate to the left by forcing the use of the language preferred by the left. The left don’t like the truth because they can’t handle the truth, and they are deathly afraid of other people hearing the truth.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a male who thinks he is a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy.
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Resistance is not futile. I will not be assimilated.

My good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter William Teach noted this morning how some on the left are claiming that, by allowing contrarian views to be presented, the media are hurting the fight against global warming climate change.

“The devastating heat wave in Europe this week is a reminder that we need to take urgent action to slow human-caused warming, but the media is still giving air to the opinions of people who do not believe there is cause for alarm, which makes the problem seem less dire than it actually is,” said David Rapp, a psychologist and professor at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) who coauthored the research.

The argument that climate change is not man made has been incontrovertibly disproven by science again and again, yet many Americans believe that the global crisis is either not real, not of our making, or both, in part because the news media has given climate change deniers a platform in the name of balanced reporting, according to the researchers.

The left, who used to be so very strongly for freedom of speech and of the press, sure aren’t for it anymore, and want to push the credentialed media into restricting language, so they can shape the debate in ways in which they see an advantage. We have previously noted how The New York Times has given OpEd space to Andrew Marantz, a writer for The New Yorker, to claim that “Free Speech Is Killing Us: Noxious language online is causing real-world violence. What can we do about it?” Twitter now bans “deadnaming” and “misgendering”, not allowing any discussion of whether the ‘transgendered’ really are the sex they claim to be rather than their biological sex — something the Times gave Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a male who believes he is actually a woman, and who goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy. OpEd space to claim that such censorship actually promotes freedom of speech. We have pointed out how National Public Radio’s Laurel Wamsley gave space for Alex Schmider, associate director of transgender representation at GLAAD — yeah, a real unbiased source there! — to compare “using someone’s correct pronouns to pronouncing their name correctly – ‘a way of respecting them and referring to them in a way that’s consistent and true to who they are.'”

Mr Schmider did tell the truth in one important way. Using a ‘transgendered persons’ preferred pronouns and sexual identity terms is meant to be “respecting them and referring to them in a way that’s consistent and true to who they are.” Miss Wamsley put it as “a crucial way to signal courtesy and acceptance.” At bottom, it is an attempt to coerce “acceptance” by claiming it is only courtesy.

The unasked question is — and the author never added anything into her article which would have paid any attention to those who disagree — what if someone does not accept the idea that Bruce Jenner is really now a woman, or that anyone can somehow change his sex?

It begins with a falsehood. “Sex,” Miss Wamsley wrote, “refers to a person’s biological status and is typically assigned at birth, usually on the basis of external anatomy. Sex is typically categorized as male, female or intersex.” This is wholly untrue. While we might forgive His Majesty King Henry VIII for believing that Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn were somehow responsible for his first two surviving children being daughters, the role of the X and Y chromosomes in determining the sex of mammals, including humans, has been known for over a century. Sex is not somehow “assigned” at birth; sex is determined at conception, depending upon whether the sperm which fertilized the egg carries the X or Y chromosome. We recognize the sex of a newborn child by visual examination of the child, but the characteristics which indicate sex developed long before birth, during gestation, as programmed in by the developing child’s DNA.

It’s kind of amusing that some couples have “gender reveal parties” is sex isn’t “assigned” until birth. 🙂

When you read or hear someone talking about sex being assigned at birth, you know automatically the pure bovine feces is about to follow.

From National Review:

AP Stylebook Issues Guide for Transgender Coverage

by Abigail Anthony | Friday, July 22, 2022 | 7:23 PM EDT

The Associated Press Stylebook, which for decades has served as the default style manual for most news organizations, has issued a “Topical Guide” for transgender coverage that encourages writers to use “unbiased language” and to “avoid false balance [by] giving a platform to unqualified claims or sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views.”

There it is again: the AP does not want the media to present the view that people cannot really change their sex.

Yet the guidance appears to explicitly embrace the language and claims of transgender activists, a move likely to steer newsrooms away from objectively framing the issue.

The AP Stylebook has issued prior guidance related to gender and sexuality, and some of that is repackaged in the Topical Guide. But it does include some updates, together providing an extensive reference for journalists.

The Transgender Coverage Topical Guide explains: “A person’s sex and gender are usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants and can turn out to be inaccurate. Experts say gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure consisting of only men and women, that can vary among societies and can change over time.” The guide encourages writers to refer to subjects according to their preferred gender identity. The guide condemns “deadnaming,” or referring to a transgender person’s previous name, because that “can be akin to using a slur and can cause feelings of gender dysphoria to resurface.”

Of course, sex cannot change, and sex is recognized at birth, not assigned at birth.

The guide describes the term “sex” by explaining “a person’s sex is usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants, sometimes inaccurately” and further advises writers to “avoid terms like ‘biological male,’ which opponents of transgender rights sometimes use to oversimplify sex and gender, is often misleading shorthand for ‘assigned male at birth,’ and is redundant because sex is inherently biological.”

It is certainly true that “biological male” or “biological female” are redundant, but the formulation has been pushed by the fact that there are those in the world who claim to be the sex they are not. That the Topical Guide claims that “biological male . . . is often misleading shorthand for ‘assigned male at birth,’” is inherently stupid, because it assumes that sex is ‘assigned’ at birth.

There’s more at the original. There are those who claim that referring to a ‘transgendered’ person by the names, pronouns, and honorifics they claim, rather than those which represent what they actually are, is a simple matter of courtesy, and courtesy is important.

But is it courteous to ask someone to lie, especially to lie to himself? That is what the Associated Press, what the ‘transgendered,’ are asking; they are asking people who know that Bruce Jenner isn’t really “Caitlin,” that Ellen Page isn’t really “Elliot,” that Will Thomas isn’t really “Lia,” to lie to the public and to themselves, to perpetuate, through language, something they do not believe.

Well, I refuse. At The First Street Journal we have our own Stylebook, a Stylebook used by almost no one else,[2]Unlike the Associated Press Stylebook, for which subscribers must pay, and which is why I have been unable to provide the hyperlink to the original, our Stylebook is free and open to anyone who … Continue reading but here we do not lie.

To be “courteous,” to use the terms the ‘transgender’ activists and the Associated Press and the credentialed media want you to use is to concede the argument, is to surrender on what you know to be true.

Don’t concede, don’t surrender. Be true to what you know to be true.
________________________________

Cross-posted on American Free News Network.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a male who believes he is actually a woman, and who goes by the faux name “Parker” Malloy.
↑2 Unlike the Associated Press Stylebook, for which subscribers must pay, and which is why I have been unable to provide the hyperlink to the original, our Stylebook is free and open to anyone who chooses to use it. If you do wish to use it, all we ask is appropriate credit.
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It’s not just the killings; Philadelphia has become virtually uncivilized

Sometimes things strike me as just pegging the Irony Meter. The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Editorial Board of which endorsed District Attorney Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner for re-election, uncritically published a story about some Philly day campers receiving training about how to stop blood loss from people who’ve been shot in the city’s mean streets:

Sign of the times: At this Philly day camp, teens learned “stop the bleed” training for gunshot victims

With gun violence rising in Philadelphia, 50 city youth got practical training and stop-the-bleed kits at a one-day camp.

by Kristen A Graham | Friday, July 22, 2022 | 4:58 PM EDT

Alyssa Heiser hopes she never has to use the things she learned Friday, but she’ll sleep a little better knowing she’s prepared.

If someone gets shot, the 17-year-old said, she’ll remember the stop-the-bleed steps she picked at a one-day camp held at Ben Franklin High School on Friday: Call 911, apply pressure with hands, pack the wound and press down, and apply a tourniquet.

“I’m in a neighborhood where robberies, shootings, murders happen all the time,” said Heiser, who lives in Frankford. “Little kids are getting shot, people just out watching fireworks are getting shot. The way things in our city are happening, we all need this.”

Heiser and about 50 other youths participated in a gun-violence prevention and de-escalation day camp sponsored by Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity in conjunction with the Philadelphia Police Department.

The idea sprung from work that Christopher Stith, the fraternity’s regional director of social action, had been doing. During a Phi Beta Sigma town hall on gun violence held earlier this year, most of the talk centered on the way violence effects young people.; Stith had developed the “Sigma Self-Defense Series,” lessons in de-escalation and self protection.

There’s more at the original.

There were 315 homicides in Philly in 2017, the year in which Mr Krasner campaigned for, and won, the office of District Attorney. In his first year in office, that rose to 353, then 356, then 499, and in 2021, set the city’s all-time record of 562. So far this year, the City of Brotherly Love is seeing an average of 1.5149 murders per day, a pace which, if maintained, would see 553 murders in 2022, fewer than last year, but well ahead of the 500 homicides in second place, a record set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990.

Of course, it’s not just homicides. Somehow, the Philadelphia Police Department got the homicide numbers wrong for this year, which is dumb because the source for this document is the same one which reported 297 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, July 17th, and had 304 listed for the same date in 2021.

More, it shows a 6.64% increase, from 2,199 to 2,345, in shooting “incidents”, and 4.56% increase in shooting victims, from 1,249 to 1,306. I suppose that the difference between 2,345 and 1,306 means that there have been 1,039 reports of shootings in which no one was struck.

It does report a large increase in robberies, both involving a firearm and not, and increases in every property crime listed.

Now, in the midst of a heat wave, assaults by three ‘unruly’ teenaged girls on Thursday, which led to vandalism, has now led the city to drain the pool and close it for the rest of the season. City Parks and Recreation said that the pool was closed due to concerns for the safety of staff and visitors, and that this pool, in the crime-ridden Kensington section, has had many problems, including multiple break-ins after hours. The Parks Department did not say that the staff had all just up and quit, or refused to work at that pool again, but the city has had a serious shortage of lifeguards for the pools, and opened only 50 of the 65 pools in the city.

The last Republican mayor of Philadelphia left office when Harry Truman was still President of the United States. Perhaps, just perhaps, the policies of the Democrats who have run the city for the last 70 years just don’t work very well.

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Economics writer Eduardo Porter wants gasoline to rise back to $5.00 per gallon It's for our own good, don't you know?

A bit hard to read, due to the glare from the sun, but this was the price at the station closest to my home, on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, $3.999 per gallon. It has been as high as $4.699 per gallon.

Just because you are having difficulty paying your bills doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have to pay more for gasoline!

Eduardo Porter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Latin America, US economic policy and immigration. He is the author of “American Poison: How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise” and “The Price of Everything: Finding Method in the Madness of What Things Cost.” A prolific writer on economic matters, I have, sadly, been unable to find a link to his net worth, but it’s obvious that he’s reasonably well-to-do, with gigs with Bloomberg, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. It’s also obvious that he doesn’t really care about how people earning less than he does live.

The Earth Wants Biden to Keep Gas Prices High

There’s one bold move President Biden could make to curb climate change: Find a way to put a $5-a-gallon floor on gasoline prices.

by Eduardo Porter | Wednesday, July 20, 2022 | 10:10 AM EDT | Updated: July 20, 2022 | 11:34 AM EDT

When President Joe Biden visits the decommissioned coal-fired Brayton Point power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts, on Wednesday afternoon to lay out his planned executive actions on climate, his allies will be looking for bold initiatives. As Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley put it to the Washington Post, the impasse in the Senate created by Senator Joe Manchin’s blocking of his environmental agenda “unchains the president from waiting for Congress to act.”

Continue reading →

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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force?

No, I didn’t misspell the word in the title: the spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.

I have noted, many times, that black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, as evidenced by the fact that the newspaper, to meet publisher Elizabeth Hughes’ decree that it be an “anti-racist news organization,” but has become racist in itself.

I also noted that when Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw decided to fire the officer who (allegedly) killed 12-year-old Thomas Siderio, Jr, who had shot first at police, injuring one, and then was pursued and shot as he fled by another officer, the Commissioner declined to name the officer, expressing concern for his safety, but the inquirer managed to ferret out his name and print it. What are we supposed to think other than the Inky is trying to get the officer killed?

Well, they’re at it again!

Philly police fire lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word on a radio call last month

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days notice of his termination on July 5 — a standard practice in police firings.

by Max Marin | Wednesday, July 20, 2022

The Philadelphia Police Department has moved to fire a veteran lieutenant who allegedly used the N-word while on a recorded line with a police radio-room worker last month, officials said Wednesday.

Lt Anthony McFadden, from his LinkedIn page.

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a department spokesperson, declined to identify the officer but said he was given 30 days’ notice of his termination — a standard practice in police firings — on July 5. Police sources identified the officer as Lt. Anthony McFadden, a 32-year veteran of the force who was previously assigned to the Special Victims Unit.

So, the Police Department spokesman declined to identify the officer, but the Inky turned to its internal sources, got his name, and published it anyway.

I have to ask: what’s the point? Only one thing comes to mind: The Inquirer is trying to keep Lt McFadden from being able to get another job on another police force.

This is the same newspaper which doesn’t report on most actual murders in the city, and scrubs out the race of the victims on the few occasions that it does, and of the (alleged) perpetrators when known. In all but the most sensational cases, the Inquirer does not tell readers the names of the perpetrators.

Miss Hughes’ newspaper won’t tell us about actual murders in the City of Brotherly Love, but a police lieutenant says a bad word? Grounds for the firing of a 32-year veteran — will they deny him his pension? — and for the Inky to try to sabotage any future job prospects he may have.

And people wonder why the Philadelphia Police Department cannot get recruits to fill the undermanned force? The Department doesn’t have their backs, and the local media try to crucify them!

oo0oo

Updated! Thursday, July 21, 2022 | 8:43 AM EDT

In the story Person of interest in Monday’s gunpoint rape on subway platform is in custody, reporter Mensah H Dean tells Inquirer readers that:

A person of interest in the rape of a woman on the platform of a South Philadelphia subway station was taken into custody Wednesday morning, the Philadelphia Police Department said.

The person, whose name has not been released, was taken to the Special Victims Unit for questioning, the department said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Perhaps the “person of interest’s” name has not been released, but I note that the Inky did not put enough effort into finding it out, as they did with Lt McFadden.

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300

Congratulations to Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw: the City of Brotherly Love has, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, July 18, 2022, hit 300 murders for the year!

Of course, the city is still behind last year’s pace, but not by much, not by much, just 1.32% down from last year’s 304 killings as of the same date.

Monday was the 199th day of the year, so Philly is seeing 1.5075 murders per day, which projects out to 550 for the year. Calculated another way, taking the percentage of total murders for the year compared to 2021, I can also project 553 homicides.

But those numbers might be a touch low. As I noted on July 9th, Philly saw a drop off in the homicide rate between July 9th and the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend last year, but, at least in the last ten days, I have seen no evidence of such a drop-off this year.

For four straight years, 2013 through 2016, Philly saw fewer than 300 murders for the entire year.

As of 8:32 AM EDT, The Philadelphia Inquirer hasn’t even noticed, nor are there any stories on either the website main page or crime page.

Update! As of 1:04 PM EDT, the Inquirer still has nothing on hitting 300 murders.

Update! The Inky has gone all cool, and rather than putting time stamps on their articles, you see things like “Updated an hour ago”. Well, it’s 6:38 PM EDT, and “updated an hour ago,” Chris Palmer and Mensah H Dean wrote the Inquirer article finally noting that yeah, there have been 300 killings in the City of Brotherly Love.

Three hundred people have been killed in homicides in Philadelphia in fewer than 200 days this year, according to police — a grim tally that has been fueled by an alarmingly violent July, during which 43 people have died in just 2½ weeks.

Police said the year’s 300th killing occurred just before 10 p.m. Monday in West Philadelphia, when 18-year-old Lameer Boyd was fatally shot while standing on the 500 block of West 52nd Street. Investigators recovered more than 50 rounds at the scene from three guns, said Chief Inspector Frank Vanore, and detectives were seeking video and other evidence to learn more about the crime. No one was arrested.

The killing meant the city has reached 300 annual homicides at a rate surpassed only by last year, when the troubling milestone was reached on July 16. By the end of 2021, police said 562 people had been slain in homicides, the highest total in at least half a century.

Few other years in recent memory come close to rivaling the city’s current level of gun violence; as recently as 2017, the city recorded fewer than 300 homicides for the entire year.

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How does Joe Biden not realize how ridiculous this is?

Remember how getting rid of the evil Donald Trump and putting the adult Joe Biden in charge would greatly lift respect for the United States abroad?

Russia ridicules Biden’s trans and non-binary appointees

“Keep going that way, our dear American ex-partners!” urged Russia’s UN ambassador in response to a photo of Levine and Brinton

by Madeleine Hubbard | Sunday, July 17, 2022 | 7:06 PM EDT

Russia is ridiculing transgender Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine and non-binary Deputy Assistant Nuclear Energy Secretary Sam Brinton, after a photo of the queer duo at the French ambassador’s home went viral last week.

Russian Foreign Affairs communications official Maria Zakharova posted a photo on Telegram of Brinton and Levine in heels and skirts at the party with the caption as translated: “Answer the question honestly for yourself: Are these the values that you are ready to instill in your children? Or do we still fight for our own?”

Russia’s United Nations diplomat Dmitry Polyanskiy also reposted a photo of Levine and Brinton with the caption: “Keep going that way, our dear American ex-partners! I don’t think we even need any long-term strategies to counter your malicious role in the world – you are doing the right thing yourselves! And let the whole world see WhoYouAre!”

Brinton, became the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Department of Energy in June, posted the original photo with Levine on Instagram. The account has since been made private, but many screenshots of the photo are circulating online.

Brinton has a controversial personal life, as reported by Just the News in February. In his free time, Brinton is a gender-fluid LGBT+ activist, a drag queen and a “pup” fetishist.

If I have used a non-‘credentialed’ media source for this article, it is because The New York Times and The Washington Post, supposedly our ‘newspapers of record’, are ignoring this story completely.

I have to admit it: I did not know what a “pup” fetishist is, and had to look it up. Now, the distinguished Mr Brinton, who is a drag queen and apparently likes to play like a puppy has received a Top Secret Q Clearance.

In the September 2, 2015 issue of the Advocate, a homosexual rights advocacy site, Mr Brinton defended Rentboy, a homosexual prostitution referral site. Yet this man male now has access to a great deal of our country’s top secret nuclear information. This is putting the adults in charge?

The ludicrousness of this situation was revealed when Mr Brinton chose to appear in drag at the home of the French ambassador for Bastille Day. He could have gone dressed normally, but no, he had to use his appearance to look as ridiculous as he possibly could, which means that either:

  • He doesn’t realize that appearing in public in drag makes him look ridiculous; or
  • He is more concerned with pushing the homosexual, transgender and ‘non-binary’ political agenda than he is with his very important and serious job.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive; both could be true, and both probably are true.

And Richard Levine?[1]In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal uses the real, proper names of those claiming to be ‘transgender,’ meaning the names and pronouns appropriate to their … Continue reading This dumpy man male would disgrace even a man’s military uniform, he’s so horribly out-of-shape, but wearing a woman’s military uniform makes him look even more ridiculous. While Dr Levine’s position isn’t a military one, he is the commander of the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service, and it’s worth noting that any military officer in Dr Levine’s physical shape — even disregarding him being ‘transgender’ — would be told to shape up or ship out. Either as the male that he is, or the woman he claims to be, he is just a disgrace to a military uniform.

But, you know what? This may well be a good thing. The more the weirdos try to normalize their idiocy, the more that normal people are going to realize just how stupid and clownish all of their agenda is. It’s one thing to say, OK, we’re going to just be polite and call Richard Levine ‘Rachel,’ and let Sam Brinton use ‘they/them’ pronouns — though actually reading an article in which the plural pronouns are used to refer to a single individual is mentally jarring and just comes across as wrong — but the more they present themselves in public like this, the more that normal people are going to rebel. As even liberal but normal parents are having problems with the homosexual and transgender agenda being pushed on their children, and the homosexual and transgender advocacy groups become more extreme in their pushing, the more that we can hope that those people will be marginalizing themselves.

President Biden is an elderly man, one who grew up in a normal, Catholic household, someone who sees himself as a devout Catholic, even if he’s gone totally in on the pro-abortion agenda, and even he can’t possibly see this as normal, even he can’t possibly not be embarrassed by the actions of his subordinates. It’s one thing to have an openly homosexual Secretary of Transportation in Pete Buttigieg, but at least the Secretary tries to look normal, rather than like a clown. There is at least reasonable hope that Mr Buttigieg can and will do his job without his homosexuality taking over everything, without him pushing his sexuality on everyone he meets.

But it’s something entirely different to have people like Dr Levine and Mr Brinton in high office, with their entire self-presentation pushing their weird sexuality on everyone they meet. What normal person could take Dr Levine and Mr Brinton seriously?

References

References
↑1 In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal uses the real, proper names of those claiming to be ‘transgender,’ meaning the names and pronouns appropriate to their biological sex and names given by their parents.
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Will Bunch really hates him some representative democracy . . . when the voters don’t vote the way he thinks that they should

Will Bunch, the long-time opinion columnist for what I sometimes call The Philadelphia Enquirer,[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. describes himself as “the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what’s happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.”

Well, yes, he does have some “strong opinions,” but that doesn’t necessarily make them smart ones.

As world burns, a weak America’s climate fail makes us prey for monsters like Manchin, MBS

As Europe swelters, a weak-looking Joe Biden is played by Joe Manchin at home and MBS in Saudi Arabia. It didn’t have to be this way.

by Will Bunch | Sunday, July 17, 2022

In England, the place that invented the railroad and mastered the subway with London’s majestic Underground, the government is telling folks to stay off trains in the capital for the next couple of days. That’s because they can’t guarantee that the rails won’t buckle or melt in an extreme heat wave — the worst ever recorded in the nation’s long history.

Melt? Melt? Railroad tracks are made of steel, the melting point of which, depending upon how it is alloyed, is between 2,500º and 2,800º Fahrenheit. Buckle? Steel, like virtually every material, expands and contracts as the temperature changes, and at temperatures in very hot summer weather, the expansion may exceed the width of the expansion joints, possibly pushing the rails out of proper alignment.

Now, I can see how the distinguished Mr Bunch got the word “melt” in mind. From The New York Times article he cited:

In a country unaccustomed to such heat, workers were spreading grit on the roads, fearing they would melt without protection.

That, too, is wrong: asphalt, often called tarmac or tarmacadam in the UK, isn’t going to melt, as in become a liquid, but the surface can soften and become a bit sticky when it reaches 113º F. Nevertheless, Mr Bunch did use the word from his source, so it’s not entirely his fault, but a responsible journalist should have at least questioned it.

Mr Bunch continues for several paragraphs to tell us how beastly hot it has been in Europe for the past several days, paragraphs I’ll skip here to get to the meat — if Spam­® actually qualifies as ‘meat’ — of his column.

As Americans, the story we’ve always told ourselves in order to live is that the United States is the essential nation that always rises up to meet those global alarm bells, from World War II straight through to the current crisis in Ukraine. But our nation’s military and diplomatic might (for better or worse) looks nothing like America’s long-running addiction to oil, which is turning us into a pitiful helpless giant.

One might note here that all of Europe, far more politically liberal than we rebellious colonists, has proven to be just as dependent upon oil and natural gas, in particular Russian oil and natural gas. As we have previously noted, European energy companies have kowtowed to President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s payment demands, in a face-saving mechanism to allow the Europeans to state that they are paying un euros, while Russia’s Газпромбанк converts euros to rubles, so Vladimir Vladimirovich can say that his demand to be paid in rubles has been met . . . and the ruble propped up on world currency markets at the same time. And this is being done for the obvious reason: Europe needs Russian gas and oil. It’s July right now, but to quote Eddard “Ned” Stark would say in Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming.”[2]Most Americans don’t realize it, but significant portions of western Europe, including almost all of Germany, are north of 49º, the western portion of our border with Canada. Northen Europe … Continue reading

It all came to a head on Friday as President Biden pulled a rare “double Neville Chamberlain,” as his country’s need for an immediate fix of cheap, planet-destroying crude oil made America’s commander-in-chief look hopelessly weak in two places at once. That America just can’t quit fossil fuels caused POTUS 46 to kowtow to a murderous dictator in the Middle East, even as events in Washington showed the Biden administration is held back by shortsighted greed on Capitol Hill from doing much of anything to end our oil oligarchy at home.

As a U.S journalist who holds the press freedoms of the First Amendment sacred, I have never been as disappointed and demoralized by Biden as the moment Friday that he fist-bumped Saudi Arabia de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the vile monarch who personally ordered the violent death of a critical Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, feared to have been dismembered with a bone saw after his body was never found.

One might more accurately call Mr Bunch a journolist. The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. Somehow, in a country in which seemingly no secrets can be kept — other than Ghislaine Maxwell’s client list — the majority of JournoList’s roughly 400 members has been kept unpublished, and Mr Bunch’s name is not on the Chatham Journal’s list of the 64 known members.

One of a number of reasons that Biden rallied just enough voters to oust Donald Trump in 2020 was his proper moral outrage over the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, as he branded the Saudis “a pariah” state. Apparently American morality is only valid when gas prices are under $4 a gallon, though. Biden’s flipflop — to travel halfway around the globe to hand a stone-cold killer a photo op to restore his global credibility — shows that America is still held hostage by Middle East dictators’ ability to manipulate world oil prices.

Ever since the 1970s, Americans have been warned about the political dangers of failing to end our dependence on foreign oil from unstable, antidemocratic regions like the Middle East. Biden’s willingness in 2022 to chuck the Bill of Rights out the window for an ounce of black gold was exactly what they were talking about. But while I believe Biden’s actions in the present are shortsighted, self-serving and will be judged badly by history, I also have to acknowledge that he’s playing the horrible hand he was dealt by a generation of faux leaders that came before him.

President Biden “chuck(ed) the Bill of Rights out the window”? Well, yeah, he pretty much did when it came to trying to impose mandatory COVID vaccinations, but that’s not to what Mr Bunch referred. The columnist apparently believes that because President Biden met with the de facto ruler of a sovereign nation, he has thrown the First Amendment’s protection of Freedom of the Press into the dumpster. Sorry, but the United States doesn’t control other nations.

It was just over 34 years ago — June 24, 1988, to be exact, in the last year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency — when the New York Times carried the front-page headline, “Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate.” That expert, the NASA climate scientist James Hansen, said at a Senate hearing that “[i]t is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.’’

Instead, there has been so much waffling.

Writing for the New Yorker on Saturday, the climate activist and writer Bill McKibben offered an excellent history of congressional cowardice and inaction on climate that long predates last week’s news that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — a multimillionaire from continued coal royalties — is so far using his veto power as the fulcrum of a 50-50 Senate to prevent any environmental legislation from passing in 2022.

The distinguished Mr Bunch apparently believes that, as a Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin must represent not the people of West Virginia who elected him, but the liberals of New York and San Francisco and Washington, DC.

In 2018, Senator Manchin had a ‘progressive’ opponent in the Democratic primary, Paula Jean Swearengin, and Mr Manchin defeated her, among a Democrat-only electorate, 112,658 (69.86%) to 48,594 (30.14%). It appears that the Mountain State’s Democrats heavily support Mr Manchin, whose politics were well known after eight years in the Senate. His general election victory, over Republican nominee Patrick Morrisey, was much closer, 290,510 (49.6%) to 271,113 (46.3%), as the people of West Virginia, while they like Senator Manchin, are moving heavily toward the Republican Party. In 2020, Mountain State voters gave 545,382 votes (68.62%) to President Trump, and only 235,984 (29.69%) to Joe Biden.

It would seem that Mr Manchin is doing something really radical like representing the views of his constituents!

McKibben reminds us that every single Republican and Democratic member of the Senate’s “millionaires’ club” voted 95-0 in 1997 to urge then-President Bill Clinton not to join the rest of the world in signing the Kyoto Protocols to reduce fossil-fuel pollution, and that Republicans cowed by the newly formed Tea Party (which got “Astroturf” funding from the oil billionaire Koch brothers) killed 2009′s “cap and trade” plan to curb pollution.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the 95 senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, didn’t think that the Kyoto Protocols were a good deal for the United States.

Whatever his reasons, while President Clinton sent Vice President Al Gore to Kyoto to sign the Protocols, he refused to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. Could those reasons be that he knew it would be rejected by the Senate?

Mr Bunch continued to trash the younger President Bush, as expected, but also President Obama, who “embraced fracking”, which greatly increased American production of petroleum and natural gas, meaning that we were sending fewer of American workers hard-earned dollars to Saudi Arabia!

Meanwhile, Manchin’s pro-polluter insurrection on Capitol Hill will be long remembered as the last stand of a dying regime determined to take all of us down with them. The irony is that — as you watch hundreds of Europeans drop inside their sweltering flats or succumb from heat stroke this week — Manchin’s legacy will probably involve causing even more deaths than the Butcher of Riyadh. The West Virginian’s pride and greed — the first two of the seven deadly sins — has made him a Maserati-driving multimillionaire while allegedly working as a public servant. But if the Bible that they glorify every Sunday in the hollers around Farmington, W.Va., is accurate, the senator’s sins will ultimately bring him to a place much, much hotter than 104 in the shade.

With his concluding paragraph, Mr Bunch, albeit barely, recognizes that Senator Manchin represents people who glorify the Bible every Sunday in the hollers of West Virginia. Trouble is, Mr Bunch doesn’t really approve of representative democracy, or the free choices of the voters, when those choices aren’t ones of which he approves.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 Most Americans don’t realize it, but significant portions of western Europe, including almost all of Germany, are north of 49º, the western portion of our border with Canada. Northen Europe sees some serious, serious winters.