Author Archives: Dana Pico

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The West are about out of non-military actions to take against Russia Economic sanctions are hurting democracies as much as Russia

The recent Supreme Court decisions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen and Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization have pushed almost all discussion of other issues off the front pages, but there is still that nasty little war going on in Ukraine. I have made my position clear: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was very wrong, and almost everyone wants to see Ukraine win against the Russians. But I, at least, do not think it is worth risking what Major Kong called “nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies.”

President Joe Biden and the leaders of the NATO nations have all said that Russia’s invasion is wrong, wrong, wrong, and that something ought to be done, but reality has a way of biting people in the gluteus maximus, and as the G-7 leaders meet in Berlin to decide just what to do, that reality is staring them dead in the eye. From The Wall Street Journal:

G-7 Summit Exposes West’s Challenges in Tackling Russia

Economic fallout is hampering further sanctions against Moscow as Ukraine demands more weapons to halt the Russian advance

By Bojan Pancevski | Tuesday, June 28, 2022 | 9:31 AM EDT

The original picture caption is: “G-7 leaders displayed some unity during their summit as they pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine.
Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.” Click to enlarge.

BERLIN—The Group of Seven rich democracies ended their summit with an agreement to discuss a batch of new sanctions against Russia, but the gathering underlined the limits of using economic tools to punish Russia four months after its invasion of Ukraine.

While weapons deliveries have made an immediate difference on the battlefield and Ukraine has been clamoring for more equipment to repel Moscow’s forces, sanctions have proven slow to take effect, some of them have backfired against the West, and new ones have so far been too complex to deploy quickly.

G-7 leaders displayed some unity during their three-day summit in the German Alps as they pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine, with no sign of dissent on public display. Yet Kyiv and some Western experts said the Russian advance could only be halted in the short term with more heavy weapons.

The unprecedented sanctions against Russia implemented by the G-7 and other nations—targeting Moscow’s economy, energy exports and central-bank reserves—have caused global market volatility and raised energy costs.

Now high inflation, slowing growth, and the specter of energy shortages in Europe this winter are damping the West’s appetite for tougher sanctions against Moscow.

The photo caption originally said that the G-7 leaders “pledged their unwavering support to Ukraine,” but, of course, that support is wavering, because the sanctions imposed so far are hurting their own people. The only thing I see in the photo is further evidence that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson still doesn’t know how to brush his hair. Continue reading →

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Los Angeles Times “diversity” columnist thinks white people won’t accept blacks legally carrying firearms

Erika D Smith, an opinion writer for what Patterico calls the Los Angeles Dog Trainer, writes as though there aren’t a lot of black people in city already carrying guns.

Is California ready for more Black people to legally carry guns in public?

by Erika D Smith | Monday, June 27, 2022 | 5:00 AM PDT

Nathan W. Jones leads the Bay Area chapter of the Black Gun Owners Assn. But until a few years ago, he wasn’t even into guns.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. And George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, sending racial justice protesters into the streets. And white supremacists trashed the U.S. Capitol in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Suddenly, it seemed as if America was on the brink. And with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade on Friday, emboldening a militant array of white Christian nationalists, we clearly still are.

So, on Thursday, while many were apoplectic over the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the rights of gun owners to carry a loaded weapon in public — throwing gun control laws in California and New York into limbo at a time when shootings are increasing — Jones was thoughtful.

Here’s where the OpEd column veers off into the weeds. The author noted that shootings have been increasing, but that was before the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, so the previous law wasn’t stopping shootings.

The ruling was a fairly simple one: it did not overturn New York’s law requiring people who owned firearms to have a permit to do so, but overturned the Empire State’s very restrictive requirements that the people needed a specific, approved reason to own a firearm, a reason that the state approved, and that a desire to own a weapon for self-protection was insufficient. The state can still require a permit, and laws which ban previously convicted felons from having firearms still apply, but the state cannot ban law-abiding people with ordinary reasons from obtaining such permits.

As we have previously noted, in Pennsylvania, where concealed carry permits are required, law-abiding people have been applying for permits at record-breaking rates because so many gang bangers have been carrying firearms, and have been killing people in record-breaking numbers.

On the one hand, he wants it to be easy for law-abiding citizens to be able to defend themselves “if and when the time arises.” But on the other hand, he’s a 50-year-old realist who knows that fear and hatred of Black people run deep in the United States, especially when we’re armed.

“There’s no overt racism when we go to the gun range, but we know how people are looking at us,” Jones said of the dozens of Black members who meet up to go shooting. “We know the things that people think.”

Setting aside Mr Jones exercise into mind-reading, the obvious point becomes: shouldn’t he want for the public to see law-abiding black citizens, to get people used to picturing black Americans as decent citizens? I am reminded of the Sacramento Bee putting into plain language its reasons for ceasing the publication of police mug shots, because they “perpetuat(e) stereotypes about who commits crime in our community,” by which they meant that black people are seen as criminals.[1]Erika Smith worked for the Sacramento Bee, but left before the Bee began that policy. Shouldn’t black Americans want to break that stereotype by showing themselves as responsible citizens?

Following a couple of paragraphs in which the author notes that Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and the state legislature will have to come up with some form of permit process which meets the Supreme Court’s requirements, he continues:

But the governor and lawmakers could fail, and the Supreme Court’s ruling could stand. And then, California could be forced to confront a reality that has long made many self-proclaimed liberals uncomfortable: Black people — potentially a lot of us — legally carrying guns in public.

But that’s just it: a lot of black Americans, and white Americans, are already carrying guns in public, just not all of them legally. The various permit requirements didn’t deter the criminals; they only got in the way of law-abiding people, people who didn’t have the time to apply, or didn’t want to pay a fee, or, in some cases, such as in New York, knew that their reason for wanting a firearm just wasn’t special enough to get past the bureaucrats.

It’s simple: the black — and white — Americans who we don’t want carrying firearms in public are the one already carrying them, illegally, without bothering with any stinkin’ permits, because they are criminals, or punks looking to make a street name for themselves and become criminals. But if you’re a good guy, I don’t care if you carry a firearm; that’s your business.

And once more the author veers into the weeds:

Most who join say they bought a gun for self-defense, Choice and Jones agree. Many reach out after getting — forgive the phrase — triggered by high-profile racist incidents, including last month’s massacre of Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y.

Really? Maybe in the Pyrite State, I suppose, but the article I cited above, noting the great increase in permit applications in Philly was written on March 16, 2022, two months before the Buffalo killings. They were ‘triggered’ by 499 murders in the city in 2020, then 562 in 2021, and another 251 so far this year, more than half of 500 with less than half of the year elapsed. They were triggered by an even higher number of shootings in the city than on the same day last year, even though the homicide totals have decreased slightly, apparently because the gang-bangers are squeezing off more rounds, but seem to be worse shots. While it may be true that having a firearm makes it more probable that you will injure yourself, or a family member, than defend yourself from a bad guy, such statistics are of little comfort to people stuck in Strawberry Mansion or Kensington or West Philadelphia.

Much of the rest of the argument is that, even in “liberal California” white people are going to be suspicious of black Americans carrying firearms; it is an argument, at bottom, which says that white people will simply never trust blacks.

Well, I don’t buy it. There will always be some white people who will never trust blacks, but that can be minimized by black Americans not only being trustworthy but showing that they are trustworthy, and that includes exercising their Second Amendment rights responsibly. If black Americans are seen as fighting for safety in black neighborhoods, as not tolerating the gang-bangers who ruin things and shoot up mostly black neighborhoods, more white Americans will come to understand that black Americans are just like any other group, with some good people and some bad people.

Some of this comes from my personal experience. I spent much of my career — I’m retired now — working in an integrated working-class industry, ready-mixed concrete production and delivery. I worked with black drivers and white drivers, I worked with black plant managers and white plant managers, I worked with black quality control technicians and white quality control technicians, and they pretty much all alike: some good at their jobs and some bad, some who showed up and worked hard every day, and some who tried to make it through with as little work as possible. And I knew a couple who were packing heat every day.

And it just happened again in the City of Brotherly Love:

We don’t know that the residents of this house are black, but at least one of the home invaders was, and the address, 1606 South 10th Street is in a reasonably nice neighborhood, not far from Sts John Neuman, and Maria Goretti Catholic High School; the adjacent rowhouse, at 1604 South 10th Street is listed for sale at $750,000. This is not a particularly crime-ridden neighborhood.

While the Fox 29 tweet says that the invaders “forced (the) front door open,” The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story did not confirm that, saying only that:

Detectives on the scene declined to answer reporters’ questions about why the men were entering the home, who shot them, how many shooters opened fire, or what led to the bloodshed.

Both Fox 29 and WPVI 6 ABC News reported that the dead men were attempting to break into the house, but the Inky said that, as of 10:00 PM police were still saying that it was not clear exactly what happened.

From the 6ABC News story:

“This is surprising. This neighborhood is usually very safe. It’s a shock to see something like this happen. I live a block away,” said John Carrozza. “It’s sad. It’s a sign of the times, unfortunately.”

“I’ve been here for six years. I feel really safe. I just had my catalytic converter stolen, and I’m thinking maybe it’s time to move out – for something like this to happen in the middle of the afternoon…” said Mary Grace McHale.

As in maybe move out of Philadelphia entirely? South Philadelphia is supposed to be one of the safer areas in the City of Brotherly Love, and while a single break-in isn’t really indicative, the fact that Mrs McHale had her vehicle’s catalytic converter stolen shows that planned, not spontaneous, crime is moving into that area. Is it any wonder that people are seeking firearms to defend themselves. Whatever the story at the shooting, apparently the men inside the home had to take action before the police arrived.

Erika Smith’s column had the theme that even in her very liberal city, white Angelenos would fret that more black residents might be carrying firearms. That’s being forced on them, by their own neighbors. This white evil reich wing conservative has absolutely no qualms about law-abiding black Americans carrying firearms.

References

References
↑1 Erika Smith worked for the Sacramento Bee, but left before the Bee began that policy.
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Follow the science! If someone was out to destroy transgender acceptance, what would he be doing differently?

I have previously asked if someone was out to destroy transgender acceptance, what would he be doing differently from what Will Thomas, the male swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania who claims to be a woman named ‘Lia’ has done?

Now we have this, from the New York Post:

Trans competitor beats 13-year-old girl in NYC women’s skateboarding contest

By Snejana Farberov | Monday, June 27, 2022 | 8:51 AM EDT | Updated: 9:32 AM EDT

A 29-year-old male beat 13-year-old Shiloh Catori in a skateboarding contest, and the left think that’s perfectly OK.

A 29-year-old transgender woman beat a 13-year-old girl to take home the top prize in a skateboarding contest in New York City, reigniting the debate over whether new inclusivity pushes create an unfair advantage in women’s sports.

As per our Stylebook, we do not change the direct quotes of others, but there is no such thing as a “transgender woman”; there is only a mutilated male.

Ricci Tres, from Los Angeles, who was born a man but now identifies as a woman, won the women’s division of the Boardr Open street skateboarding competition and a $500 prize, with 13-year-old Shiloh Catori, from Florida, coming in second and taking a $250 prize.

The First Street Journal endeavors to use the correct names for those who claim to be ‘transgender,’ but an internet search for “Ricci Tres'” real name failed to find it. He shall be referred to as “Mr Tres” in the parts of this article which are not direct quotes from others. [Updated: June 29, 2022: His name is actually Richard Batres.]

Four of the six finalists were under the age of 17, with the youngest being 10-year-old Juri Iikura, who came in fifth. At 29, Tres was the oldest contestant.

Tres is 838 in the Boardr Global Rankings, compared to Catori’s 133 ranking.

The transgender athlete’s victory sparked an outrage on social media among critics, who blasted Boardr Open for allowing a much older competitor assigned male at birth to face off against biological females — many of them more than half her age.

Sadly, the Post’s stylebook apparently uses the silliness of the ‘transgender’ agenda. People are not “assigned” a sex at birth; they are recognized as being what their sex actually is.

It was discovered a hundred years ago that the sex of humans and other mammals was determined by the XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomal pair, and that the sex of an offspring was determined by whether the sperm cell which fertilized the egg carried an X or a Y chromosome. Thus, sex was determined at conception, and at no other time. We used to chuckle at stories that King Henry VIII was angered by his first two wives because they gave birth to female rather than male babies, at least as far as the ones who survived infancy. With modern knowledge, we knew it was actually Henry, and not Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn, who determined the sex of his children. Now, in the 21st century, political correctness demands we abandon scientific knowledge. The formulation “sex assigned at birth” is simply political propaganda to support transgenderism.

Skateboarder Taylor Silverman led the chorus of discontent, writing in an Instagram post: “Male wins women’s finals and money at Boardr Open NYC presented by DC today. My story is not unique in skateboarding.”

Silverman, who has been skateboarding for 11 years, previously complained on social media that she had lost to transgender rivals twice, including at the Redbull Cornerstone competition in May, when she missed out on $5,000 in prize money by coming in second.

“I deserved to place first, be acknowledged for my win, and get paid,” she wrote. “I reached out to Redbull and was ignored. I am sick of being bullied into silence.”

Silverman’s post from May 17 drew a mixed response, with some users fully supporting her stance, while others accusing her of being a sore loser, with one commenter writing: “lol or you could just … be better at skating & actually win the already fair contest?”

Mr Tres’ win is hardly something as big as Will Thomas’ victory in the NCAA nationals, but it’s simply one more piece of evidence that males are not the same as females, and in athletic contests in which size, speed, strength, quickness and endurance are factors, biological males will always have an advantage over females. Simple common sense — something apparently not quite as common as we like to think — has told us this all along, and the 50 year anniversary of Title IX, celebrated just four days ago, is being bitch-slapped by males claiming to be women competing against real women in sports. There’s some real irony that the American left are using ‘transgenderism’ to undermine the opportunities for real women.

I’ll ask it again: why would biological males who are convinced that they are really female, and who want other people to recognize them as women, undertake actions which prove just how different ‘transgender women’ are from real women?

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An economist actually admits that he was wrong It's not as though we didn't know this already

“I was wrong” is not something you expect to hear from an economist. When they are wrong, economists are far more likely to push the reason for them being wrong onto things totally unforeseeable, or Donald Trump, or bad data coming from outside sources. Well, last Thursday, an economist admitted that he, and others, got things way, way wrong!

What economists like me got wrong about inflation

Predicting an end to inflation now comes down to three factors: the pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and decisions by the Federal Reserve.

by Mark Zandi | Thursday, June 23, 2022

If you are like most Americans, your number-one financial problem these days is runaway inflation. You’re desperate to know when inflation will peak, and when it will be back down to a level you can live with.

The economic pain and suffering caused by more than a year of spiking in inflation — which has dramatically raised prices on everyday goods and services — has been tough to bear. The typical family must shell out $460 more a month to buy the same items and services they bought a year ago — a huge bite out of that family’s $70,000 in annual income. For lower-income households living paycheck to paycheck, this is unmanageable.

Prices are up a lot for almost everything, but most disconcerting are the big price increases for basic staples. The nationwide cost of gasoline has soared to a record near $5 per gallon, nearly all items on grocery store shelves have suddenly become much more expensive, and rents are increasing at a double-digit pace.

I’ll admit it: it was so gratifying to see the “We were wrong” subtitle that I just had to screen capture it!

Many of us have never seen this kind of inflation before, making it especially difficult to fathom. The last time inflation was so high was two generations ago when Ronald Reagan was president. And it comes on the heels of more than a decade of inflation so low that the Federal Reserve, whose job it is to manage inflation, worried it was too low for the economy’s own good.

Also irksome is how wrong the Fed, the Biden administration, and economists, including me, were in thinking that the high inflation would quickly recede. It hasn’t.

I’m old enough that I have seen inflation this high, and much higher, from the last year under Gerald Ford, — and yes, I remember President Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” buttons — all through Jimmy Carter’s abysmal presidency, and into the first year of the Reagan Administration. I also remember what finally did ‘whip’ inflation: a deep recession in 1981 and 1982.

Mr Zandi continued to blame the COVID-19 panicdemic, and he’s right, but he’s also wrong. It was the response by governments, in the United States and around the world, to the virus that fried the economy. He blames workers continuing to stay home, having dropped out of the economy because they are afraid of the virus, but that fear was driven by governments’ messages of panic. Even now the message is being spread, at least by the media, that there are new sub-variants of the Xi Omicron variant, which “appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted.” That, coupled with the unprecedented government largess with borrowed money, have worked to keep people who should be working out of the job market. It isn’t as though serious inflation wasn’t predicted due to the government borrowing so much money! Production and supply chain disruptions caused by people not being on the job, and they are not on the job because the government has enabled them to survive without working, has to lead to inflation: they have money to spend, but fewer things on which to spend it, which drives up prices; the laws of supply and demand are not subject to government revision!

Naturally, Vladimir Putin has to be blamed, for invading Ukraine. The European Union decided to stop buying oil from Russia, which meant that they had to buy it elsewhere, putting a large increase in demand on the remaining supply. Despite the pleas of the global warming climate change emergency activists, people need fossil fuels now, to the point where very, very green Germany is going to reopen coal fired power plants to meet electricity demands.

Of course, Europe also needs natural gas, so the energy companies have found a fig leaf of cover to keep buying gas from Vladimir Vladimirovich! Soviet Russian troops in Ukraine is far less important than keeping the lights on in Europe! Remember: we told you that even before the invasion.

Also see: William Teach: Biden Minions To Travel Around Country Telling People What Biden’s Doing On Inflation

Mr Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, continues to tell readers who the high prices for oil are so pernicious in the economy, but somehow, some way, he missed the fact that the price of oil is not that high. What really happened is that the price of oil came down pretty dramatically, as oil producers, Russia especially, dumped a lot of oil onto the market, which brought prices down dramatically. This persisted for several years, resulting in the new, lower costs for oil being priced into the market, and when prices shot back up, quickly, it produced a shock in the economy.

In 1980, the average price of 87 octane regular gasoline in the United States was $1.19 per gallon. Using this inflation calculator, gasoline should have cost $3.74 per gallon in 2020, but it was $2.17 per gallon, and had, on April 27, 2020, dipped to $1.77.

The same inflation calculator puts that 1980 price at $4.22 per gallon now, but that includes the inflation caused by oil price increases itself, so is of somewhat limited value. Nevertheless, regular gasoline prices, while somewhat higher than $4.22 per gallon right now, are not extraordinarily higher; they’re still in the $4.00 to $5.00 range, albeit higher in that range. At the station closest to me, regular gasoline id $4.56 per gallon, having come down from $4.80 a couple of weeks ago.

Mr Zandi, having admitted that he, and many others, were wrong, now gives us a new projection:

  1. if the panicdemic pandemic continues to “wind down”; and
  2. if “the worst of its economic fallout” from the invasion of Ukraine is already at hand; and
  3. if the Federal Reserve “successfully calibrate(s) monetary policy”;
  4. then “the odds are good that inflation is peaking and soon will moderate to a level we can be comfortable with.”

So, what does all of that mean? It means that governments have to abandon their idiotic responses to COVID-19, and let us just live with it, which is what most of us in the United States have already done. I did notice that, in the Tour de Suisse bike race, the Swiss had abandoned the face masks that I had seen in the Giro d’Italia. The riders don’t wear masks while competing, of course, but previously everyone was masking up at the celebrations at the ends of each stage.[1]These European bike races are our vicarious vacations, enjoying the scenery even if we can’t be there. The Tour of Norway was particularly spectacular.

It means that, sorry to say it, Russia must carry on and win its war against Ukraine in some acceptable fashion, without the United States and NATO doing something to intervene more thoroughly and prolong, and perhaps intensify, the war. Russian oil and natural gas must come to back to the market and the ‘normal’ order of things be restored.

And it means that the Federal Reserve has to get everything right. Anyone here want to bet €10 on that?

Inflation will be whipped the same way it was in 1982, by a significant recession. The economy already contracted 1.4% in the first quarter of this year; if it contracts again in the second quarter, which ends this month, we will officially be in a recession . . . again.

References

References
↑1 These European bike races are our vicarious vacations, enjoying the scenery even if we can’t be there. The Tour of Norway was particularly spectacular.
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We’re not really serious about rape

Haley Reed, photo by Oldham County Detention Center, and is a public record.

It seems that every day I see another story about another criminal treated leniently. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Former Kentucky teacher gets 5 year prison sentence for sexually assaulting student

by Taylor Six | Sunday, June 26, 2022 | 9:59 AM EDT

A former choir teacher at Oldham County High School was sentenced on Thursday for raping an underage student in 2018.

Haley Reed, 40, of La Grange, was sentenced to five years in prison and is not eligible for probation, according to multiple media reports. Reed will also be required to complete sex offender treatment and register as a sex offender for life.

According to court documents, Reed pleaded guilty in March to third-degree rape and first-degree unlawful illicit sex acts with a minor under the age of 18.

There’s a bit more at the original, but the story from WLKY has a lot more information:

Reed, who wore glasses, and had her hair in two braids, kept quiet in court Thursday. But the young man she admitted to having sex with in the spring of 2018, at school, said plenty.

“This woman did everything in her power to try and cut me off from my friends and family, as well as make sure she was my whole world,” the victim told the court.

Now 21, her former student read a victims’ impact statement detailing what happened when he was 17. He called Reed a “predator’ and a “monster” and urged the judge not to continue to let her walk free.

“If I was a girl and she were a man, it would be a much different story, a pedophile is a pedophile. She deserves the maximum sentence,” he said. . . . .

The young victim, now in college, said, “Today, a pedophile is getting what they deserve.”

While she received a five-year sentence, Reed could be eligible for parole if she completes a sex offender treatment program.

Miss Reed was originally charged with:

  • KRS §530.064(2)(a) Unlawful transaction with a minor, 15 counts, a Class C felony
  • KRS §510.060(1)(d) Rape in the third degree, 10 counts, a Class D felony;
  • KRS §510.090(1)(d) Sodomy in the third degree, five counts, a Class D felony.

Under KRS §532.060, the penalty for a Class C felony(2)(c) is imprisonment for not less than five (5) years nor more than ten (10) years, while a Class D felony (2)(d) carries a penalty of imprisonment for not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years.

In effect, Miss Reed was allowed the minimum sentence for a single count of a Class C felony, and the maximum sentence third degree rape, the sentences running concurrently.

My question is: given that Miss Reed admitted to an Oldham County Police Department detective that she had “sex with a teen student approximately eight times between April and June after school hours inside OCHS,” why was she allowed to plead down?

Reed’s victim, Jacob Powers, delivered a blistering impact statement before the court this afternoon, arguing that she “deserves the maximum sentence.”

“At this time sitting here, it’s been four years since I was a victim of rape,” Powers said. “Four years since a person I originally met at 12 years old, took advantage of me. I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of much, but scanning a crowd at an event, making sure she’s not there, or having to look twice at someone in a grocery store scares the hell out of me. It’s most likely someone else, but if she’s sick enough to do what she did, why couldn’t she be there?”

Powers called Reed a “predator” who did “everything in her power” to cut him off from friends, family and to “make sure she was my whole world.”

“As a 17-year-old kid, I was taken to meet her parents, told I would be the father of her children, and that we would spend the rest of our lives together, marriage included,” he said. “These predatory tactics worked perfectly on me because being a father is all I wanted in life.”

Mr Powers was 17 at the time of the sexual offenses, which is old enough to consent to sex under Kentucky state law, but Miss Reed was a “person in authority” over the student at the time, which triggers the various statutes listed. Miss Reed’s attorney argued that Mr Powers consented and was legally old enough to do so, which drew some national attention to the case.

So, why the minimum sentences? Why don’t we treat rape seriously?

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Amanda Marcotte loses it over abortion Not that we didn't know it would happen

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter biography photo was taken in a bar.

While I knew that the left would wax apoplectic over the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I was fully aware that Amanda Marcotte would go off the deep end far worse than some of the others. Miss Marcotte wrote:

As many who watch the Supreme Court closely suspected, it now appears all but certain that the draft decision was probably leaked by a conservative trying to pressure Chief Justice John Roberts into joining the majority opinion. That pressure, if that’s what it was, worked.

This is factually untrue. From the conclusion of the Syllabus in the Supreme Court’s release of the decision, found on page 8 of the document:

ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and KAVANAUGH, J., filed concurring opinions. ROBERTS, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., filed a dissenting opinion.

Translation: while the vote to reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals, 945 F. 3d 265, was 6-3, the Chief Justice did not join with the majority opinion, but wrote separately. While Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh also filed separate, concurring opinions, they signed onto Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion. One thing is clear: Miss Marcotte did not actually read, at least not carefully, the actual decision.

It is also that, of the six justices who voted to uphold abortion bans, only one — Justice Clarence Thomas — was appointed by a president who won the majority of the vote. Both Trump and Bush obtained the White House, and the ability to nominate justices, because of the archaic electoral college system that overweighs the votes of rural whites and marginalizes the majority of Americans who support reproductive rights.

Again, this is factually untrue. While the younger George Bush received fewer popular votes than Vice President Al Gore in 2000, he not only won the popular vote in 2004, 62,040,610 to 59,028,444 for Senator John Kerry (D-M), but with a 50.7% to 48.3% margin, he won an absolute majority of all votes cast. John Roberts was appointed by the younger President Bush on July 19, 2005, which was in Mr Bush’s second term. Justice Alito was nominated on October 31, 2005, also during the President’s second term.

To compound the injustice of this, one of the Trump-nominated judges, Justice Neil Gorsuch, has no right to sit in his seat. He is only there because Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., illegally used his power as then-Senate Majority Leader to refuse to hold hearings for then-President Barack Obama’s 2020 nominee to the court, Merrick Garland.

“Illegally used”? I wonder: did Miss Marcotte ever claim that Senate Majority Leader Ton Daschle (D-SC) was “illegally us(ing)” his authority over the Senate’s schedule to deny votes to several of President Bush’s lower court nominees, stating that if they did not have the support of at least 60 members, the number required to break a filibuster, he would not allow a vote at all?

Of course, there is no law which compels the Senate to vote on any particular nomination. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 5, specifies that “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”

Instead, in a direct violation of his constitutional duties, McConnell held the seat open for a year. All so Republicans could install someone who could be counted on to ram through endless amounts of reactionary policies rejected by the American majority that wants a clean environment, sensible gun safety regulations, fair labor laws, and human rights.

Senator McConnell took a real gamble, a gamble that the Republican nominee would win the 2016 election. At the time he did this, Donald Trump was surging and leading in the Republican primaries, and all of the polls had him losing against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In refusing to allow Mr Garland to be confirmed, he was gambling that the (supposedly) more moderate Merrick Garland wouldn’t be replaced by a flaming leftist appointed by Mrs Clinton. We got lucky, and Mr Trump defeated Mrs Clinton.

And there’s no sign that the restlessness is going away. In his concurring opinion on Dobbs, Thomas openly invites lawsuits to challenge “all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” i.e. the decisions that secured the right to use birth control, the right to have sex with another consenting adult in the privacy of your home, and the right to marry someone of the same sex.

It is true that Justice Thomas has long been an opponent of the concept of “substantive due process,” not that Miss Marcotte has any flaming idea what substantive due process actually means, but it is also true that none of the other Justices joined Mr Thomas’ concurring opinion.[1]Justice Thomas concurring opinion begins on page 117 of the .pdf document. Rather, in the majority opinion, Justice Alito specified:[2]Page 66 of the Opinion of the Court, found on page 74 of the .pdf document. This is pointed out again on page 71 of the Opinion of the Court, page 79 of the .pdf document.

Unable to show concrete reliance on Roe and Casey themselves, the Solicitor General suggests that overruling those decisions would “threaten the Court’s precedents holding that the Due Process Clause protects other rights.” Brief for United States 26 (citing Obergefell, 576 U. S. 644; Lawrence, 539 U. S. 558; Griswold, 381 U. S. 479). That is not correct for reasons we have already discussed. As even the Casey plurality recognized, “[a]bortion is a unique act” because it terminates “life or potential life.” 505 U. S., at 852; see also Roe, 410 U. S., at 159 (abortion is “inherently different from marital intimacy,” “marriage,” or “procreation”). And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

Miss Marcotte has long claimed that evil reich wing conservatives want to take away the right to use contraception, but when she tried to document this in her book It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, the most up with which she could come is Quiverfull, a small sect about which Wikipedia said, “One 2006 estimate put the number of families which subscribe to this philosophy as ranging from ‘the thousands to the low tens of thousands’.”

Even taking the extreme position of Miss Marcotte that we evil reich wing conservatives want to ban contraception, it fails the logic test: while we might want our wives to bear us as many strong, fine sons as possible, we really don’t want our mistresses to get knocked up and cause us problems, or cost us child support.

Of course, if our mistresses are married to other men, we do want to get them pregnant, so other, weaker men will have to pay to rear our progeny. 🙂

Is there a sarcasm tag for the previous two paragraphs?

Of course, the author had absolutely no problem with vaccine mandates for COVID-19.

References

References
↑1 Justice Thomas concurring opinion begins on page 117 of the .pdf document.
↑2 Page 66 of the Opinion of the Court, found on page 74 of the .pdf document. This is pointed out again on page 71 of the Opinion of the Court, page 79 of the .pdf document.
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One way or another, I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya

You can never escape!

One way or another, I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way, or another, I’m gonna win ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way, or another, I’m gonna see ya
I’m gonna meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya
One day, maybe next week
I’m gonna meet ya, I’m gonna meet ya, I’ll meet ya

. — Blondie and coronavirus

It seems that the plebeians have become too complacent about COVID-19, and need to be frightened again! From CNN:

New coronavirus subvariants escape antibodies from vaccination and prior Omicron infection, studies suggest

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN | Updated 5:20 AM EDT, Thursday June 23, 2022

Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 appear to escape antibody responses among both people who had previous Covid-19 infection and those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, according to new data from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, of Harvard Medical School.

However, Covid-19 vaccination is still expected to provide substantial protection against severe disease, and vaccine makers are working on updated shots that might elicit a stronger immune response against the variants.

The levels of neutralizing antibodies that a previous infection or vaccinations elicit are several times lower against the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants compared with the original coronavirus, according to the new research published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

“We observed 3-fold reductions of neutralizing antibody titers induced by vaccination and infection against BA4 and BA5 compared with BA1 and BA2, which are already substantially lower than the original COVID-19 variants,” Dr. Dan Barouch, an author of the paper and director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wrote in an email to CNN.

“Our data suggest that these new Omicron subvariants will likely be able to lead to surges of infections in populations with high levels of vaccine immunity as well as natural BA1 and BA2 immunity,” Barouch wrote. “However, it is likely that vaccine immunity will still provide substantial protection against severe disease with BA4 and BA5.”

Note what is being said here: we are being told that the vaccines will protect people better from getting sick from the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, but implies, though it does not directly state, that immunity from the vaccine will protect you where “natural BA.1 and BA.2 immunity,” from having contracted and recovered from the virus will not.

They recently found that the BA.4 and BA.5 viruses were more likely to escape antibodies from the blood of fully vaccinated and boosted adults compared with other Omicron subvariants, raising the risk of vaccine-breakthrough Covid-19 infections.

The authors of that separate study say their results point to a higher risk for reinfection, even in people who have some prior immunity against the virus. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 94.7% of the US population ages 16 and older have antibodies against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 through vaccination, infection, or both.

Simply put, the vaccines will not prevent you from contracting the virus, but will, at best, keep you from getting as sick from it. We might as well face it: masks don’t help anything, and we’re all going to contract the virus at some point. In all probability you have already contracted it at some point, but may not know that you had it.

BA.4 and BA.5 caused an estimated 35% of new Covid-19 infections in the United States last week, up from 29% the week before, according to data shared by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday.

BA.4 and BA.5 are the fastest spreading variants reported to date, and they are expected to dominate Covid-19 transmission in the United States, United Kingdom and the rest of Europe within the next few weeks, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

I am certainly no anti-vaxxer, and have been vaccinated, and twice boostered myself. But these were my free choices, and I believe that everyone should have the right to choose freely whether or not to take the vaccines.

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Killadelphia Philadelphia ties 2013's homicide totals, with more than half of the year remaining.

Congratulations for Philadelphia’s Mayor, Jim Kenney, District Attorney, Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw! As of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 22, 2022, under their leadership the City of Brotherly Love has, with 246 homicides this year, tied the total number of murders for the entire year of 2013.

I will admit it: I hadn’t previously thought much of former Mayor Michael Nutter. He was a liberal Democrat in a line of liberal Democrats — Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office while Harry Truman was still President! — and, in following John Street, I didn’t really see reason to hope that he’d be any better than Mr Street. But, under Mr Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams — who wound up with legal problems of his own, and served 2½ years in federal prison — and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, murders in the City of Brotherly Love steadily declined, from 391 in 2007, the year before Messrs Nutter and Ramsey took office — Mr Williams was elected in 2009, succeeding Lynne Abraham — down to 246 in 2013. There was an increase to 248 in 2014, and then 280 in 2015, Messrs Nutter’s and Ramsey’s final year in office.

But nothing like the increases under Mayor Kenney! 2016 saw 277 killings, but then they jumped to 315, then 353, 356, 499 and 562 last year. It was only by pure, dumb luck that 2020 finished below 500 homicides, given that there were two more on New Year’s Day of 2021, and the Philadelphia Police Department actually stated that there had been 502 homicides in 2020, before ‘correcting’ that down to 499. I fouled up and didn’t take a screen capture of that when it was up, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Were it not for the previous record of 500 homicides in 1990, under Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame, Mayor Kenney would have both first and second place in the homicide numbers.

But, not to worry: although this year’s homicide numbers are down slightly, 5.75%, the city is still on track for between 519 and 530 homicides, easily good for second place.[1]Methodology: I divided the total homicides by June 22nd of this year by 261, the number of murders on the same date in 2021, yielding 0.9425287356321839, then multiplied that number by 562, the … Continue reading

The chart to the right? That includes only those years in which homicides were at least 400; Mayor Kenney ought to break into that chart again, for this year, sometime between and October 2nd and 8th.

Whatever Messrs Kenney and Krasner, and Miss Outlaw, are doing, doesn’t work!

References

References
↑1 Methodology: I divided the total homicides by June 22nd of this year by 261, the number of murders on the same date in 2021, yielding 0.9425287356321839, then multiplied that number by 562, the number of homicides in 2021 to get 529.70. I use this method to account for the fact that there are more warm months ahead than behind, and homicides normally increase in summer and fall. Another method, dividing 246, the number of homicides, by 173, June 22nd being the 173rd day of the year, yielding a figure of 1.421965317919075 killings per day, then multiplying that by 365, yields 519.02 homicides for the year.
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“So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” — John 8:7

Stacey Henley, from his Twitter biography.

I will admit it: I had never heard of Stacey Henley before. Mr Henley writes about electronic games, and those are simply of no interest to me. But now he’s telling us that if we choose to go to see Spider-Man: Lotus, we must be horrible, horrible raaaaacists.

Titled Spider-Man: Lotus, the movie was one of the most anticipated amateur movie projects. I say ‘was’, but in a lot of cases, it still is. The reason the movie has become so controversial is because the actor playing Spider-Man, Warden Wayne, has just been outed as having a history of using racial slurs. In particular, casual use of the N-word with an ‘a’, and occasional use with a hard R. He’s white.

What? Does that mean if Mr Wayne was black, it would be acceptable?

This was almost immediately followed by leaks that the movie’s director, Gavin J. Konop also had a history of racial and ableist remarks. This is not just the best boy and assistant grip (with apologies to all the hard working crews out there). This is the star and the director. You could not find two people who better represent the film. Knowing that the two most central people in the project are racists has obviously put a lot of people off from watching and supporting Spider-Man: Lotus. But predictably, a lot of people don’t care.

We do not know, of course, how many other people associated with the movie might hold views that Mr Henley would find objectional, or label racist, or sexist, of homophobic, or transphobic. Whatever all of the other actors, writers, producers, directors, cameramen and other techs, wardrobe people, and whatever might happen to be just isn’t published information. But Mr Henley wants to cancel them all!

That old selfish chestnut is being rolled back out – ‘lots of people work hard on this movie and I want to support them’. I call bull effluence, pal. You just want to watch the movie, and a little racism isn’t going to stop you. If that’s the case, just say that. Say ‘racism just isn’t a dealbreaker for me, I want to see Spider-Man’. We’d understand. It’s so rare to see Spider-Man in movies these days. It’s been, what? Five months since the last one left theatres? A lifetime.

A clue here: if Messrs Konop and Wayne can get ‘cancelled’ by this, other people will lose their jobs. The author either doesn’t realize that, or he doesn’t care; both are possible.

My good (electronic) friend, Robert Stacy McCain, noted that Ezra Miller, the actor who played the Flash in Justice League, has had roles in several other movies, including some big-budget films, and is not starring in The Flash, has run across some serious legal problems:

In June 2022, the Standing Rock Sioux tribal court issued a temporary order of protection against Miller on behalf of 18-year-old activist Tokata Iron Eyes. Chase Iron Eyes and Sara Jumping Eagle, Tokata’s parents, requested the court order due to Miller allegedly using “violence, intimidation, threat of violence, fear, paranoia, delusions, and drugs” to hold sway over their child. The relationship between Miller and Tokata Iron Eyes, which began in 2016 when Miller was 23 and Iron Eyes was 12, also included Iron Eyes flying to London in 2017 to visit Miller on the set of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Iron Eyes also dropped out of school in 2021, allegedly to follow Miller. Iron Eyes’ parents also alleged in their documents that Miller had caused bruises on their child’s body and that Miller had manipulated their child to believe they are transgender. Tokata later responded by denying their parents’ allegations. As of June 10, 2022, law enforcement has been unable to locate Miller to serve them with the order. . . .

On June 16, 2022, a mother and her twelve-year-old child were granted a temporary harassment prevention order against Miller in Massachusetts, after the latter allegedly threatened the woman’s family and showed inappropriate behavior towards the child. According to the mother and child, Miller, who was originally visiting a neighbor, showed up to the family’s house unexpectedly while wearing a bulletproof vest and brandishing a gun before “pestering” the child by “uncomfortably” touching their hips.

Yeah, you start messin’ around with 12-year-olds, and even the greedy sleazebags in Hollywood might see this as a problem. You can picture the scene in the corporate offices at Warner Bros., with executives asking, “Wait a minute — we spent $200 million on a movie starring a guy with ‘they/them’ pronouns? And now he’s on the lam, accused of diddling 12-year-olds, two weeks before the movie’s supposed to hit theaters?”

Mr Miller came out in 2012 as, well, sexually odd. He stated that he identified neither as a male or a female, and that looking for love in all the wrong places meant there was no place off limits. Pretty serious stuff, when you consider the accusations that he had attempted to manipulate a 12-year-old to believe he was transgender.

Yet, despite Mr Henley’s attacks on the star and director of The Flash, I have yet to find anything by the author condemning Mr Miller.

Of course, transgenderism is Mr Henley’s real concern, and he attacked J K Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter world, because Miss Rowling, very much a hard left liberal, doesn’t seem to accept the quaint notion that girls can be boys and boys can be girls:

It’s the same excuse people use for supporting the upcoming Hogwarts Legacy game. JK Rowling, the single most influential person in the Harry Potter franchise, might have said some horrible things, but I really want to support Gary the junior level designer, so I have to support this game (with apologies to our hard working devs). Troy Leavitt? Never heard of him.

Why is it so important to the author? Because he claims to be a “transgender woman.” Of course, in accordance with The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we refer to the author by the appropriate honorifics and pronouns. I have, as yet, been unable to determine Mr Henley’s birth name, but Stacey is a name used by both males and females, so Stacey Henley could actually be his birth name. Mr Henley was born a male, and a male he will always be, regardless of how many medications he takes, or under which surgical procedures he had gone.

So why hasn’t Mr Henley, at least as far as I could find, told us that we must boycott The Flash? After all, the accusations of sexually abusing or ‘grooming’ a 12-year-old are pretty serious, and Mr Miller does not seem to have put up much of a defense against them yet.

JK Rowling matters particularly because she is the acceptable face of transphobia. A few of her celebrity chums have declared for her in this nonsensical culture war, but none have come out with half the degree of erroneous and transphobic rhetoric as she has. A great number of middle-class media columnists seem to agree with her, and they have a significant platform themselves, but there are few other major cultural figures waiting in the wings to replace Rowling as the transphobe-in-chief. She is crucial to the movement.

For a while, it seemed as though she was being locked out of her own legacy. She was not present for the Harry Potter reunion, and again, the developers have deliberately and explicitly distanced themselves from her. However, the latest trailer for Fantastic Beasts promotes itself under her name, fluttering across the screen in huge letters. It’s easy to convince ourselves that she’s a pariah, that she is now divorced from the world she created, but she’s not. She seems to be heading in that direction, but as long as you all support Harry Potter regardless of how hateful and deliberately malicious JK Rowling’s statements become, you’re saying trans people just don’t matter as much as fictional wizards. A boycott got rid of Papa John after his repeated racial slurs, but Papa John’s as a business still exists. There doesn’t seem to have been any serious attempt to remove JK Rowling from the idea of Harry Potter, lest it mean missing out on the next instalment of a series that ended its golden age a decade ago.

I guess that if you buy a pizza from Papa John’s, you’re racist!

I confess: I’ve read all of the original Harry Potter books. I thought it was silly when Miss Rowling said, many years later, that Albus Dumbledore was homosexual, because there was none of that in the books. And I’ve seen Aquaman, in which Amber Heard, the former Mrs Johnny Depp, stars as Mera, because I don’t care, one way or the other, about the ridiculous Johnny Depp/Amber Heard lawsuits. Some people blame the former Mrs Depp, and some people blame her ex-husband, but I really don’t give a darn about the claims and counter-claims of two Hollywood celebrities. When Aquaman 2 comes out, I’ll probably see that, too, though at home, when it comes out on one of the channels I get.[1]I’m about ¾ deaf, and there are certain consonants I just don’t hear, so seeing movies in the theater doesn’t work for me. At home, I have closed captioning available.

I also haven’t boycotted Jane Fonda’s movies, or Sean Penn’s, though, let’s face it, Mr Penn’s only great character was Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and he’s been going downhill since then. I just don’t care about whatever sins the actors may have committed. Jesus said, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

That’s not hypocrisy on my part; that’s me telling you what is, and is not, important to me.

But for Mr Henley, to not tell us to avoid Mr Miller’s The Flash movie, yeah, that’s hypocritical, and it always will be.

References

References
↑1 I’m about ¾ deaf, and there are certain consonants I just don’t hear, so seeing movies in the theater doesn’t work for me. At home, I have closed captioning available.