Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Philadelphians are fighting back! When the city cannot protect the people, the people will protect themselves

We have previously noted that the law-abiding people in Philadelphia have been seeking concealed carry permits at a record pace. And we have seen stories about some of the bad guys in Philly being sent untimely to their eternal rewards.

Why are people in the City of Brotherly Love arming themselves? When there are innocent victims being gunned down for no apparent reason, when it’s not just the gang-bangers shooting other gang-bangers, and the city has a George Soros stooge ‘progressive’ District Attorney who likes to set the captives free, a whole lot of Philadelphians have gotten the message: you are on your own!

But today’s surprise is that The Philadelphia Inquirer has actually reported on it!

As more people get guns and carry permits, Philly sees a sharp rise in homicides ruled justified

More people in Philadelphia are legally arming themselves and shooting their armed attackers amid a violent crime spike.

by Mensah M Dean | Monday, June 20, 2022

In May, a South Philadelphia man stepped out of his house for a smoke when police said a gun-wielding man rode up on a bicycle and demanded money. The homeowner dropped his cigarette, pulled out his licensed gun, and fatally shot the would-be robber in the head.

In March, an assistant manager at a Dollar General store in North Philadelphia used his legal gun to shoot a man who police said burst into the store in a ski mask, demanded money, and threatened to kill the cashier. “I’m opening up the register for you, sir,” said the manager, who instead pulled his own handgun and shot the robber in the head, killing him.

The same month, a customer with a carry permit inside Max Food Market in the Yorktown section fatally shot a gunman who tried to rob him while he was playing a video poker machine. “You have to defend yourself,” said Maximo Torres Rodriquez, the store’s owner. “You have to do it.”

The three would-be assailants died from their injuries and in all three cases authorities brought no charges against the shooters. These sorts of deadly clashes in which the intended victims survive and assailants die are rare in Philadelphia, but are becoming more common as a growing number of people have legally armed themselves amid rising numbers of carjackings, shootings, and homicides.

Mr Rodriquez put it exactly right: sometimes “You have to defend yourself. You have to do it.”

Also read: Jennifer Stefano: The case for impeaching Larry Krasner

We’re not supposed to say it, but sometimes a homicide is a public service. When the Dollar General assistant manager shot and killed the would-be robber, perhaps the robber would have been satisfied with the cash and left without hurting anyone, but as crooks get successful, they are also emboldened, and the odds are extremely high that he’d have attempted to knock over another store and another store, and eventually someone would get shot, and possibly killed.

Justified homicides jumped 67% from 2020 to 2021 ― from 12 to 20 according to the Philadelphia Police Department. An additional six have been ruled justified by the department but are awaiting the District Attorney’s Office to sign off. In 2019, there were 10 justified killings, six in 2018 and eight in 2017, the department said.

So far in 2022, victims have shot at least eight armed assailants to death, with more than seven months remaining in the year.

“The total number of shootings and the climate of gun violence has gotten more severe,” said District Attorney Larry Krasner. “So I would expect that there would be more situations involving self-defense.”

As Krasner said, the surge in justified shootings reflects the general rise in gun violence in the city. With unjustified homicides hitting a record total last year, with 562 victims, self-defense killings climbed too, though only slightly as a percentage of all homicides.

Let’s do the math:

  • 2017: 315 murders + 8 justified homicides = 323 total, 2.48% justified.
  • 2018: 353 murders + 6 justified homicides = 361 total, 1.66% justified.
  • 2019: 356 murders + 10 justified homicides = 366 total, 2.73% justified.
  • 2020: 499 murders + 12 justified homicides = 511 total, 2.35% justified.
  • 2021: 562 murders + 26 justified homicides = 588 total, 4.42% justified.
  • 2022: 230 murders + 8 justified homicides = 238 total, 3.48% justified.

The trend worries some analysts and gun-control advocates, who say civilians who buy guns for protection may be putting themselves and others at more risk, not less. They cite studies showing that legally purchased guns are more likely to be fired in accidental shootings, during domestic disputes, and in suicides than in self-defense.

721 West Butler Street. Click to enlarge.

Of course, the Inquirer article let us know that more law-abiding people obtaining weapons is a bad thing, stating that they are more likely to be discharged in accidents, domestic disputes and suicides, offering several paragraphs of statistics.

There is one thing that the article did not include, perhaps because it simply isn’t quantifiable. We have previously published several street scene photographs of Philadelphia, showing how many residents have put themselves in jail, barring up their porches and windows, to try to defend themselves from the thugs. There is an attitude of fear, fear! permeating the city, a fear that at any time your number could come up, and that is due to the city not protecting innocent people. When you have a district attorney like Larry Krasner who largely refuses to prosecute illegal firearm possession cases, who doesn’t like to enforce the laws already on the books, who metes out slaps on the wrists for even violent crimes, coupled with a homicide rate higher than Chicago’s, of course people are going to be worried. People are buying firearms for the protection of their families and themselves because it has become blatantly obvious: the city isn’t protecting them.

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The abomination of ‘red flag’ laws It's OK if we suspend your constitutional rights for just a little while, right?

Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA), who will be leaving office at the end of the year, tweeted out a nice little graphic of what happens under the so-called “red flag” laws. Due process of law, he tells us, is part of it.

But look at the graphic.

Jane’s social media contact, Randy, posts photos of guns & cryptic messages.

Followed by:

Jane calls the police to report the posts.

What does “cryptic” mean?

adjective Also cryp·ti·cal.

  1. mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous: a cryptic message.
  2. abrupt; terse; short:
  3. a cryptic note. secret; occult:
  4. a cryptic writing. involving or using cipher, code, etc.

So, if Jane simply doesn’t understand Randy’s message, Governor Wolf wants her to call the cops!

Then follow the next steps:

The police petition in court to temporarily remove Randy’s guns.

Police provide evidence that Randy is a danger to himself/others.

The court agrees to a temporary removal of Randy’s weapons.

You know what you don’t see in there? You don’t see any notification to Randy, and presumably Randy’s attorney, that he is under investigation to see if he “is a danger to himself/others,” because, just like any search warrant, the court and the police do not want the subject of the warrant to know the police are coming to enter his home and seize evidence. Due to Jane’s puzzlement over Randy’s message, the police show up, enter his home, possibly forcibly, and seize his property, all without Randy having had a chance to defend himself before the court.

Now, up to this point, Randy has committed no crime! Rather, because Jane is worried about him, she has sicced the cops on him, and don’t fool yourself: while police officers are normally more politically conservative than liberal, there’s nothing the police, or at least police chiefs, like more than a disarmed public. As they view Jane’s complaint, if they are going to err, they are more likely to err on the side of wanting Randy’s guns removed.

There’s even an incentive there: if they don’t try to have Randy’s firearms taken away, and it turns out that he does commit a crime, or even suicide, with his weapons, and it comes out that the police had Jane’s complaint and didn’t try to take Randy’s guns, they, or their city or jurisdiction, could be held liable in a civil suit. But Jane, doubtlessly, will be shielded from legal action for calling in a genuine concern, and I can see the red flag laws the left want passed keeping her identity confidential.

The police are not the only ones who do not like an armed citizenry; prosecutors don’t care for it much, either, so persuading the prosecutor or city attorney or whomever needs to petition the judge for the removal order might not be difficult. Judges, though not liable for the consequences of their decisions, might well feel their own internal pressure to prevent a tragedy.

So, what’s missing in all of this? As Jane, and the police, and the city attorneys, and the judges, several people, are all at least somewhat motivated by the idea that they could prevent a tragedy, there’s no one involved to protect Randy’s rights.

Enter Jeff Goldstein, and Robert Stacy McCain’s story on his problems:

Crazy People Are Dangerous (and the Problem With ‘Red Flag’ Laws)

Saturday, June 18, 2022

You haven’t forgotten Deb Frisch, have you? In October 2018, Frisch — whose harassment of Protein Wisdom blogger Jeff Goldstein lasted a dozen years — was finally sentenced to four years in a Colorado prison. When last we heard about her, in August 2021, she had been denied parole after ranting insanely at her parole board hearing.

This morning, I noticed I’d gotten some extra traffic to one of my posts about Frisch, and investigation led to Not The Bee: If you need a reason to oppose“red flag” gun laws, this writer’s harrowing 12-year tale of terrifying stalking and harassment might just do the trick.

To cut a long story short, the lovely Miss Frisch became obsessed with Mr Goldstein for some insane reason or other, and when things didn’t go the way she wanted, she started attacking, online, of course, not physically, Mr Goldstein and his family, in particular his then two-year-old son. Miss Frisch made baseless accusations that Mr Goldstein was molesting his son, all of which had to get the attention of local law enforcement; allegations of child sexual abuse are always things which trigger law enforcement investigations.

Mr McCain concluded:

The way our legal system operates — the built-in prejudices of courts, based on decades of precedents intended to “protect” the rights of the mentally ill — it is very difficult to get a dangerously deranged person locked up. Whenever a mentally ill person commits an atrocity (or gets shot by the cops), you’ll see commentators saying that this shows problems with our nation’s mental health system, when in fact it was liberal judges in the 1970s and ’80s who decided it should be nearly impossible to keep crazy people locked up in lunatic asylums, where they belong. These same judges, however, will probably be willing to sign “red flag” orders based on unproven claims, without due process for those targeted by such orders.

According to Governor Wolf, the gun owners do receive due process, even though they don’t get any chance to defend themselves until after their homes have already been invaded by the police and their legally-owned firearms seized, all on the word of someone who doesn’t like a “cryptic” message.

Now, there’s a difference between Jane, who thought Randy’s social media posting had a “cryptic” message, and Miss Frisch, who accused Mr Goldstein of child sexual abuse, but the result is the same: without any actual evidence of a crime beyond someone’s stated ‘concern,’ both “Randy” and Mr Goldstein had to defend themselves through the legal system, costing them expensive attorney’s fees — Mr Goldstein specifically mentioned that he’d had attorneys — to regain their weapons. The fictional Jane in Governor Wolf’s tweet might have had motives as pure as the wind-driven snow, but Miss Frisch’s were wholly malevolent, and (seemingly) driven by obsession and mental illness.

But the police and the courts have no choice but to take allegations of child sexual abuse seriously, and the same will be true of “red flag” law accusations. How can anyone know, prior to an investigation, whether the accuser or ‘tipster’ is being either deliberately fraudulent or simply concerned, but they’ll have to act.

It could be an estranged husband or wife, trying to gain leverage in child custody or support. It could be someone who can’t stand the thought of Bambi getting killed who calls the cops on a guy just before deer season. It could be one gang trying to get another gang disarmed. Or it really could be a concerned citizen who believes he has seen something of legitimate concern. The trouble is that you can never know unless the police actually investigate, and that means records and trouble and quite possibly a suspension of his constitutional rights for an innocent civilian, along with possible attorney’s fees.

The real secret is actual law enforcement. Remember Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people and wounded 17 others in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting? There were continual warnings about him, and at least 23 incidents where the Broward County Sheriff’s Department had calls about him, but nothing was done. Had the Sheriff’s deputies done something really radical like arrested him and charged him with crimes, he could have been convicted, and barred from buying a weapon. The Broward County schools knew of his behavioral problems, transferred him from school-to-school, but, in an effort to keep him out of the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline,’ did not notify law enforcement when he assaulted another student.

If law enforcement had done their job, Mr Cruz would not have been able to buy, legally, the weapons he did. If the school district had done their jobs, he would have been reported to law enforcement in a manner which could not be ignored.

So, because the people who are charged, under the law, with notifying law enforcement about someone like Mr Cruz haven’t been doing their jobs, Governor Wolf and the left want ordinary citizens like the fictitious “Jane” to do the job, and to create a system where Jane’s speculation and word have legal weight. After all, it’s for people’s safety, right?

Well, there are a lot of constitutional rights which could be ignored, to improve public safety! We could do away with the need to prove guilt, and just imprison, or execute, anyone we just “knew” was a bad guy. We could suspend the rights of free speech and free association, to keep the bad guys apart. Given that half the country seemed to think that the right of free association and assembly could be suspended over COVID-19, and a bunch of state governors got away with it, well surely that right isn’t really important, right?

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” It seems that a whole lot of Americans have decided that they deserve neither liberty nor safety.

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In which Larry Krasner shows us just how much respect he has for the Philadelphia Police!

Sometimes, you just can’t make up this stuff!

Philadelphia’s George Soros stooge ‘progressive’ District Attorney, Larry Krasner, tweeted:

Ahead of Father’s Day, I challenge anyone thinking about picking up a gun unlawfully, think twice, and remember the families gun violence is wrecking. If you are caught by the @PPD, you will be held accountable. Have a peaceful Father’s Day weekend.

The image to the right is a screen capture of Mr Krasner’s original, because it’s highly likely that he’ll delete it. Why? @PPD is not the Philadelphia Police Department’s Twitter account, @PhillyPolice is. @PPD leads to a suspended account.

Mr Krasner’s recent tweet is very much at odds with what he has said before, that he does not believe that arresting people and convicting them for illegal gun possession is a viable strategy to reduce shootings. Perhaps I’m just not edumacated enough, but it seems to me that a guy who’s locked up can’t shoot anyone, that a guy who does not have a firearm cannot shoot someone.

That latter is what the gun grabbers argue, right, and Mr Krasner wants stronger gun control laws, but he won’t enforce the ones already on the books!

There’s a move in Harrisburg by the state House of Representatives to impeach and remove Mr Krasner, but it will fail: while the Republicans have majoritioes in both Houses of the General Assembly, they do not have the requisite 2/3 super majority to remove him from office.

And why should they? In his initial campaign in 2017, Mr Krasner told the voters what he would do, and he was elected by a wide margin. Then in 2021, with plenty of evidence that Mr Krasner was doing exactly what he said he would do, the good people of Philadelphia re-elected him, by a landslide margin. One thing is clear: Philadelphians want a district attorney who will not seriously prosecute criminals.

The city’s last Republican mayor left office when Harry Truman was President of the United States. Seventy straight years of Democratic Party rule has helped turn the City of Brotherly Love into the [insert slang for feces here]hole city that it is today, but the voters simply can’t learn the obvious lesson, that Democratic policies simply do not work.

So, my friends in the state House of Representatives, leave Mr Krasner alone. He is exactly what the good people of Philadelphia want, and he is exactly what the people of Philadelphia deserve.

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The journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer

No, that’s not a typo 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.

As we have mentioned, The Philadelphia Inquirer is the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and has won 20 Pulitzer Prizes for its reporting. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal are all significantly younger than the Inky. With 6,245,051 people according to the 2020 census, Philadelphia and its surrounding metropolitan area is the seventh largest in the United States. With a population of 1,603,797, the city of Philadelphia itself is the sixth largest in the United States. So why, then, does the Inquirer rank only 17th in circulation? Could it be because they censor the news?

Another pro-life clinic attacked, this one in Philadelphia

by Joe Bukaras | Wednesday, June 15, 2022 | 3:41 AM EDT

A pro-life pregnancy center in Philadelphia was vandalized last weekend with smashed windows and graffiti.

Latrice Booker, director of Hope Pregnancy Center in Philadelphia, told CNA that when she drove by her clinic Saturday, June 11, she found four windows smashed, with one written on with graffiti. It is unclear what the graffiti says.

Three glass doors were smashed as well, she said. She estimated the damages to be around $15,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, the windows were boarded up and the clinic is in the process of repairs. They are still open for business, she said.

Booker said that the clinic offers all its services to help women and families in need at no cost. She said that the clinic is not dissuaded in its mission by the vandalism and called on people of faith to “stand tall” despite the vitriol against pro-lifers.

There’s more at the original. Naturally, I searched the Inky’s website, to see if I could find this story, and to my very much not surprised self, I found nothing, nada, zilch, zippo, ничего. You can see the top of the search results if you click on the image to the right.

I did, however, find hundreds of articles on abortion, in a site search for pro life clinic, virtually all of them supporting the pro-abortion position in one way or another. The ‘pro-choice’ crowd do not like the term ‘pro-abortion,’ but it is economically accurate: to support having the choice to have an abortion, you must concomitantly want enough abortions to occur to keep the abortuaries open. President Clinton’s formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” falls on its own weight, because if abortion is rare, abortion providers can’t stay in business.

From Politico:

Garland returns to Oklahoma City to warn that domestic terrorism is ‘still with us’

The attorney general has vowed to crackdown on a resurgence of violence linked to white supremacist and right-wing militia groups.

by Josh Gerstein | April 19, 2021 | 12:14 PM EDT

Attorney General Merrick Garland returned Monday to Oklahoma City — the site of the nation’s most deadly act of domestic terrorism and of his formative experiences as a young prosecutor — to deliver a warning that the threat of domestic extremism is again on the rise.

Delivering his first major speech as attorney general, Garland told a memorial service that the nation must remain vigilant against such dangers.

There were plenty of other stories, such as “Top law enforcement officials say the biggest domestic terror threat comes from white supremacists.” in The New York Times, while National Public Radio reported:

At Tuesday’s hearing, Jill Sanborn, the head of the FBI’s National Security Branch, told lawmakers that the threat posed by domestic violent extremists is “persistent and evolving.” The “most lethal threat” from domestic violent extremists, she said, is posed by white supremacists and anti-government militias.

So, I’m wondering: was the vandalism at a pro-life pregnancy center or one at a similar clinic in Washington DC the work of evil reich-wing extremists or white supremacists?

Decades ago, the Inquirer’s masthead declared itself to be a “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. Now it should have a blurb similar to the one that ought to be on The New York Times, “All the News That’s Politically Correct.” The Inky just doesn’t want you to tell its readers the truth, and that’s why the only real newspaper in our nation’s seventh largest metropolitan area is just 17th in circulation.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington show trial

Though he has been out of office for 17 months now, Donald Trump lives on, rent-free, in the skulls of the left. Four of the lovely Amanda Marcotte’s last five Salon articles are all about Trump, Trump, Trump!,, and, as always, the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer feel Mr Trump knocking on the inside of their skulls as well. I will admit it: I missed this bit of dumbness from the Inky on Tuesday, but they were good enough to tweet about it to alert me:

Liz Cheney’s lonely fight against the extremist wing of the GOP | Editorial

Cheney’s work on the committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, has come at great professional and personal cost, including death threats.

by the Editorial Board | Tuesday, June 14, 2022

It shouldn’t make headlines when a member of Congress upholds their sworn oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) stands out as one of the few elected Republicans in Washington willing to put country before party.

The vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol understands that the peaceful transfer of power is the linchpin of our democracy. She also fully grasps the historic importance of ensuring accountability for the months-long effort by Donald Trump and his minions to steal the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

Can we tell the truth here, since the Inky omitted it? Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) is not on the committee because the GOP appointed her, but because Speaker Nancy Pelosi did, to try to make it seem as though this was bi-partisan. There are two, and only two, Republican members, Miss Cheney and Rep Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) on the committee, the only two Republicans who voted to establish it in the first place. Mr Kinzinger, one of just ten Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump, could see the handwriting on the wall, and decided not to seek re-election.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: The J6 Smear Machine

I can’t just copy-and-paste the entire editorial, but you can read it if you follow the embedded link. The Editorial Board lament that Miss Cheney has lost power and prestige within the Republican caucus, and that she’s very likely to lose the Republican primary for re-nomination for Wyoming’s at-large House of Representatives seat.

The Inquirer Editorial Board does not typically agree with Cheney’s policy positions. She is a hard-line conservative who voted with Trump 93% of the time. But we agree that Trump is a danger to democracy, which is why we’re taking the unusual step of endorsing Cheney in the upcoming congressional primary.

This is where it truly got funny. The Editorial Board absolutely refused to endorse any Republican candidates in the Pennsylvania GOP primaries, due to their pro-life positions, but here they’ve endorsed Miss Cheney, who is pro-life herself, because Mr Trump is living so loudly within their skulls.

While most of our readers can’t vote for Cheney, they can donate to her campaign, send a message of support, encourage friends in her district to vote for her, and talk with friends and family about the ongoing threat to democracy that the Trump wing of the GOP represents.

In the 2020 presidential election, President Trump received 193,559 votes, 69.94% of the total, compared to Mr Biden’s 73,491, or 26.55%, and the Cowboy State provided Mr Trump’s largest percentage margin in 2020. The vast majority of Wyoming’s residents will never read or even hear of the Editorial Board’s position, and even if they do, the silly thing is behind the Inquirer’s paywall!

Friday will mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Nixon’s abuse of power and obstruction of justice were also a threat to democracy and the rule of law, but Republicans in Congress placed the Constitution and country above politics. Their actions were bolstered by public opinion shaped by the same set of facts. In today’s America, where right-wing pundits spin the truth Trump’s way on Fox News and the internet, it’s more difficult to reach consensus.

Watergate was an actual, serious — and completely unnecessary — crime, something that the Capitol kerfuffle really isn’t. The left want to call it treason, sedition, an insurrection, but the kerfufflers weren’t even armed. It’s kind of difficult to stage some sort of coup d’etat without any guns. Even Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch was better planned than January 6th as far as insurrections go.

Cheney’s lonely fight for her fellow Republicans’ support suggests Congress cannot be counted on this time. If the House Select Committee’s attempt to bring Trump to justice fails, it will be left to voters to remind candidates and incumbents who have dismissed the ongoing attack on our democracy that the people will have the last word.

Of course, the neither the House Select Committe, nor the House of Representatives as a whole, nor the Congress as a whole, can “bring Trump to justice”. The Congress has no power to issue indictments, and the two futile impeachments have demonstrated that a third attempt would be just as much of a waste of time and money. Meanwhile, the public are suffering under an 8.6% inflation rate, the economy contracted 1.4% during the first quarter, and store shelves are occasionally empty. This House Select Committee farce is very much about trying to deflect the voters’ attention away from the failures of the Biden Administration today by trying to focus them on 17 months ago. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who absolutely hates Republicans for denying him a Supreme Court seat, and his minions at the Department of Justice, do have the power to indict former President Trump on whatever crimes for which they can find evidence, but it’s laughable to picture being able to seat an impartial jury against him.

Republicans agitated for President Trump’s entire term to bring Hillary Clinton and her minions to justice, and it never happened. President Gerald Ford, with his pardon of former President Richard Nixon, pretty much established that the United States was not going to put former Presidents on trial, so the House is now engaged in something not that dissimilar from the Moscow show trials.

From 1861 to 1865, we were engaged in what Abraham Lincoln called a “great Civil War,” but, after the defeat of the Confederacy, no one was brought to trial for treason or revolution against the United States. Robert E Lee was charged, but never tried. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured, and held in irons in a casemate at Fort Monroe for two years before any trial, but was eventually released on bail; no trial was ever held, as President Andrew Johnson, on Christmas Day of 1868, issued a blanket “pardon and amnesty” for treason to “every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion.”

The Editorial Board and the Democrats want to treat the Capitol kerfuffle more harshly than the Civil War, which saw a million Americans, civilian and military, sent early to their eternal rewards.

The Editorial Board concluded:

(I)t will be left to voters to remind candidates and incumbents who have dismissed the ongoing attack on our democracy that the people will have the last word.

In the end, that much is true. And while the general election is still 4½ months away, and anything can happen, the probabilities are that the voters will have that last word by ending the Democrats’ majority in the House of Representatives and quite possibly the Senate as well. If the Republicans regain control of the Congress, will they hold show trial hearings over the Mrs Clinton and her campaign and the faked ‘Russian collusion’ scheme? They could, and today’s Democrats have set the precedent to allow them to do so.

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Latina Republican Mayra Flores flips Texas 34th District seat to GOP; The New York Times is aghast!

Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX 34), from her campaign website. Click to enlarge.

Yes, it was ‘just’ a special election, and yes, Mexico-born Mayra Flores will only hold the seat until the beginning of January unless she wins the general election in November, but this could well be a sign of things to come. From The New York Times:

Republicans flip a Democratic-held House seat in South Texas, at least for now.

by Jennifer Medina | Tuesday, June 14, 2022

A U.S. House district in South Texas will send a Republican to Congress for the first time in its 10-year history.

Mayra Flores, a Republican and respiratory-care health aide, scored a significant victory in a special election on Tuesday for the party, which has been trying to capitalize on its successes in 2020 in the Democratic stronghold of the Rio Grande Valley. She will be the first Latina Republican from Texas in Congress.

Ms. Flores defeated three opponents in the special election to replace former Representative Filemon Vela, a Democrat who retired this year before the end of his term. She captured more than 50 percent of the vote in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, according to The Associated Press, and will avoid an expected runoff with Dan Sanchez, a Democrat and former commissioner in Cameron County.

Her win may only be temporary, however.

The special election was held to determine who would fill the remainder of Mr. Vela’s term until the end of this year. Voters in the general election in November will decide who will become the district’s permanent representative beginning in January. Representative Vicente Gonzalez, who currently represents a neighboring district, is the Democratic nominee for November, and is widely favored to win the race against Ms. Flores, who is also running to fill the seat permanently in November.

It isn’t difficult to see how the Times is trying to downplay her victory, but note: she won outright, avoiding what the Times called “an expected runoff” election.

Republicans have directed enormous sums of money and attention to the race in recent weeks, seeking an early victory in a district that includes the border city of Brownsville. Ms. Flores raised 16 times the amount of money that Mr. Sanchez did. And she and her allies have spent more than $1 million on television advertisements, while Democrats have largely stayed off the air.

Republicans believe they have found an ideal candidate for the region in Ms. Flores, who immigrated to the United States from Mexico as a young child. Her parents spent years working as migrant farmworkers in Texas. She is the wife of a Border Patrol agent and has campaigned on strict immigration enforcement in the overwhelmingly Mexican American district.

Say what? A Mexican-born immigrant, yet she favors “strict immigration enforcement,” and she won in a heavily Latino district? From her campaign website:

Mayra Flores was born and raised with humble beginnings in Burgos Tamaulipas, Mexico. Her parents and grandparents raised her with strong conservative values and to always put God and family first. She came legally to the United States at six years old with the help of her father. Her father gave her family the biggest gift, the gift of becoming a proud, naturalized American Citizen.

She and her family immigrated to the United States legally! That’s what Republicans support, that’s what I support!

Her parents were migrant workers, and like all migrant kids, she moved a lot growing up. She spent most of her life in the Rio Grande Valley and in 2004, she graduated high school in San Benito, TX. Growing up, Mayra worked alongside her parents in the cotton fields in Memphis, TX to earn extra money for school clothes and supplies. Instilling the value of hard work and the importance of education in her at a young age, Mayra remains a firm believer in the American Dream and will always fight so that others can achieve it as she has. She is eternally grateful to her parents for providing her with an opportunity to come to this amazing country to live the American Dream. Mayra graduated in 2014 as a Respiratory Care Practitioner with the support of her family. She currently works caring for the elderly and disabled with chronic respiratory issues and has been on the front lines helping patients combat COVID-19. She continued her studies and graduated with a Bachelors in Organizational Leadership from South Texas College. Mayra currently serves as the Hidalgo County GOP Hispanic Outreach Chair and has played a critical role in growing and maintaining Republican support across South Texas. She believes that having a strong relationship with the community and understanding the needs of each individual should be a requirement for any political candidate.

Mayra believes in fortifying our legal immigration system, in securing our borders, lowering the costs of healthcare, lowering taxes, promoting small businesses, and less government. She is a Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and Pro-Law Enforcement candidate that wants to earn your vote. She is a proud U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) wife and a mother, fighting for a better future for the children of South Texas.

One of her campaign yard signs.

Her campaign issues page is a bit more specific, though admittedly not much. Nevertheless, she supports our Second Amendment rights, law enforcement, border security, and Texas’ business-friendly regulatory environment to help create businesses and new jobs. More, she stated, “My Christian faith[1]Apparently Catholic, though her biography page does not so specify. is a core part of who I am. My parents raised me to be a strong woman of faith and defending individuals religious liberties will always be a priority of mine.” That, for me, is hugely important.

For what more can a conservative ask?

Times reporter Jennifer Medina had warned the Democrats that this might be coming:

How Immigration Politics Drives Some Hispanic Voters to the G.O.P. in Texas

Former President Donald J. Trump’s brand of populism has been widely viewed as an appeal to white voters. But similar grievances have resonated in the Rio Grande Valley in a profound way.

by Jennifer Medina | Monday, February 28, 2022 | Updated: Tuesday, March 1, 2022

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Mayra Flores, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, has done much of her campaigning in South Texas in Spanish. She has heard one phrase repeatedly from voters as she and other candidates try to become the first Republicans to represent the Rio Grande Valley in Congress.

¿Y nosotros?

And what about us?

“I hear every day that they’re tired — they feel that there is so much attention and help being given to the immigrants,” Ms. Flores said. “The attention’s on all these illegal immigrants, and not on them.”

The author then tells us how horrible that is!

Grievance politics, it turns out, translates.

Donald J. Trump’s brand of populism has been widely viewed as an appeal to white voters: Republicans around the country continue to exploit the fear that the left is attacking religious values and wants to replace traditional white American culture with nonwhite multiculturalism. But similar grievances have resonated in the Rio Grande Valley in a profound way, driving the Republican Party’s successes in a Democratic stronghold where Hispanics make up more than 90 percent of the population.

And why is that?

The difference is in the type of culture believed to be under assault. Democrats are destroying a Latino culture built around God, family and patriotism, dozens of Hispanic voters and candidates in South Texas said in interviews. The Trump-era anti-immigrant rhetoric of being tough on the border and building the wall has not repelled these voters from the Republican Party or struck them as anti-Hispanic bigotry. Instead, it has drawn them in.

“Our parents came in a certain way — they came in and worked, they became citizens and didn’t ask for anything,” said Ramiro Gonzalez Jr., a 48-year-old rancher from Raymondville, on the northern edge of the Rio Grande Valley. “We were raised hard-core Democrats, but today Democrats want to give everything away.”

Mrs Flores parents were also Democrats, but she became a Republican due to her strong prolife views. In a mid-term election in which the Democrats are expected to fare poorly, you can expect them to hammer hard to get the Latino vote, but Mrs Flores’ victory tells us something good: the left cannot count on that, and may not win it at all.

References

References
↑1 Apparently Catholic, though her biography page does not so specify.
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Paying cash for crime tips

Murder in Lexington, Kentucky, is a far, far different thing than in Philadelphia, to which I’ve paid a lot more attention, but Lexington is the closest real city to where I live since I’ve retired. Lexington doesn’t have more than a murder a day, but has seen ‘only’ 22 so far this year, while the City of Brotherly Love has 227 as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, June 13th. In 2021, Lexington’s record 37 homicides, and a guesstimated population of 324,600, yields a murder rate of 11.40 per 100,000 population. Philadelphia’s 562 killings, and population estimated at 1,576,251, yields a homicide rate of 35.65 per 100,000 population, more than thrice Lexington’s.

Nevertheless, 22 homicides by June 14th is significant, because the city didn’t see its 22nd killing until July 20th last year. The statistics become less telling, and the math more uncertain when the city is seeing ‘just’ 22 murders in 165 days, but the city is on pace to see 48 murders this year. I would not, however, bet more than €10 on that number, and I think, or at least hope, that my estimate will be on the high side.

‘Money talks.’ Why Lexington investigators are offering more cash for tips on homicide cases

by Taylor Six | Monday, June 13, 2022 | 1:18 PM EDT

Bluegrass Crime Stoppers is using its “healthy budget” to offer more money for people who provide tips that lead to arrests in homicide investigations, officials announced Monday.

In a press conference, representatives with Bluegrass Crime Stoppers and Lexington police said they are increasing tip rewards to $2,500 for information which leads to the arrest and closure of a homicide case. The rewards apply to 2022 homicides and the initiative will carry on for the next three months.

Last year Crime Stoppers solved eight homicides with tips that came in through their anonymous hotline, according to Katina May, director of Bluegrass Crime Stoppers. Lexington police have nine open homicide investigations for 2022, according to police data. . . . .

“People are scared, we get that. People are scared to come forward. When they have seen something or know something, all of that information is pieces to the puzzles,” (Lexington police detective Anthony) Delimpo said. “We are trying to give more of an incentive for people to come forward.”

There’s more at the original.

Still, there’s something sad about this: a good citizen who has information about a homicide or a shooting ought to provide the information freely, on his own, especially when the city has an anonymous tip line he can use. But if that can getr more bad guys off the streets, it’s worth it.

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Pennsylvania Democrats always double down on policies that have failed in the past

Jennifer Stefano, from her Commonwealth Foundation biography page. Click to enlarge.

I will admit to some surprise that The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to Jennifer Stefano, the executive vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation and a fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. After all, Miss Stefano and the Commonwealth Foundation support “transforming free-market ideas into actionable public policies, we’re ensuring all people can flourish.”

Good luck taxing the rich when they’re gone

Pennsylvanians are moving to red states in search of smaller government, school choice, and lower taxes, writes Jennifer Stefano.

by Jennifer Stefano | Monday, June 13, 2022

Widespread shortages. Economic tumult. Disappearing businesses. When Ayn Rand released her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, in 1957, her critics considered it a work of fiction. She did not.

Her art is now imitating life in Pennsylvania. Fiction or not, Rand was prescient.

She predicted a world where government and “looters” (as she called them) exploited producers. A mysterious man named John Galt gets those business owners and workers to leave and recreate a free and fair society elsewhere.

In Pennsylvania, leaders like Gov. Tom Wolf and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney demonize financially successful individuals, with promises that if the all-powerful government bureaucracy could just take more of their money, our problems would be solved. Wolf, Kenney, and their supporters operate under the misguided belief that bigger government will heal the Earth, defeat racism, and end poverty.

Worthy goals, wrong solutions — and Pennsylvanians know it. While some will wait for November to register their discontent at the ballot box, many are already voting with their feet.

Honestly, I wish I could reproduce the entire thing, but you can read it for yourself if you follow the embedded link. Alas! in my search to see if it had been published elsewhere, I could not find it, and the Inquirer’s articles are hidden behind a paywall; I pay for a subscription so that you don’t have to! However, the inquirer does allow people a few free articles a month, so if you haven’t followed too manty of my links, you might be able to read the whole thing.

Miss Stefano continues to document for us the strong net emigration from the Keystone State, and notes to where Pennsylvanians have been moving, Texas, Arizona and, especially, Florida, all states with lower state taxes and more business-friendly laws and regulations.

It is a familiar story for Philadelphia, where the nearly century-long run of one-party rule and unrealistic policies has sent people fleeing to the suburbs. Now it’s driving them into the waiting arms of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — and the rest of Pennsylvania is following.

Miss Stefano’s points are a bit too economic specific, not that they are not valid, but such ignores the rest of Philadelphia’s horrible mismanagement, as made plainly obvious by the city’s homicide rate. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, June 12th, 227 Philadelphians had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards, and if the South Street shootings made for big headlines, only three of those victims, at least one the criminal who shot the first bullets, actually died. In the week since then, nine more people were butchered in the city’s mean streets.

A poll by the Pew Charitable Trust found that 70% of Philadelphians believe that public safety is the most important issue facing the city, and also noted that in the very diverse overall, but internally highly segregated, black and Hispanic residents felt unsafe at significantly higher rates than whites.

The Inquirer’s Editorial Board was appalled, though seemingly more appalled that whites didn’t feel as unsafe as others:

What does it mean to be a segregated city in a gun violence crisis? According to the Controller’s Office’s gun violence mapping toll, the zip codes of Rittenhouse Square and Chestnut Hill, where about 70% of the population is white, haven’t experienced a fatal shooting since before 2015. Contrast that with nearly 200 fatal shootings in North Philadelphia-Strawberry Mansion, where more than 90% of the population is Black, or nearly 240 in the Kensington-Port Richmond area, with a Hispanic population of 50%.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 12, 2021. Click to enlarge..

Given that white Americans are, in general, wealthier than black and Hispanic citizens, white Philadelphians have the greater ability to head for the Sunshine State. What that means as far as emigration is concerned, because white Philadelphians are simply safer, in general, than black or Hispanic residents, needed to be further explored.

We do know, however, that the white population of the city has dropped precipitously.

It’s easy to see why. Florida lawmakers have spent the last 22 years slashing government spending, zeroing out the income tax, lowering others, creating a vibrant school choice model with state education dollars, and fostering a business-friendly climate. . . . .

The key to righting the ship in Pennsylvania is simple and should be bipartisan. As the Commonwealth Foundation’s poll shows, a majority of voters across parties want what Florida has: low taxes, less government spending, school choice, and jobs and opportunity for themselves and their children.

The solution offered by Wolf and Kenney? Increase property taxes. Let crime run rampant. Stifle any opportunity to foster an education landscape that puts parents in the driver’s seat. Push endlessly for tax hikes against middle-to-upper-income earners.

It’s simple: Philadelphia is ruled by Democrats, has been for three generations, and Governor Wolf’s and Mayor Kenney’s plans fall right in line with standard Democratic Party tropes.

Going after people with money has become the one solution that unites Democrats. It’s a populist cause with devastating results. As Rand foretold, there will always be a Ron DeSantis (or John Galt) creating a place where all people can flourish. When wealthy people leave, those of us without the means or opportunity to follow are left behind. That means fewer tax dollars for government programs, fewer jobs, and less opportunity.

The wealthy should pay taxes just like everyone else. But good luck getting the money when they’re already gone.

One thing has become painfully clear: Democratic policies simply do not work. Conservatives have been telling the left that for decades, but the response of the left has always been to claim that the only problems are that they just didn’t go far enough; Democrats always double down.

I stated that I was surprised that the Inquirer gave Miss Stefano the OpEd space, but, on the front page of the newspaper’s website, at least as of 7:45 PM EDT on Monday, June 13th, immediately below Miss Stefano’s article was another entitled “Too much property tax relief will put city schools at risk“. The Inquirer never misses an opportunity to advocate for the policies which have failed in the past.

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Max Boot, the neo-conservatives, and endless war

Max (Maxim?) Aleksandrovich Boot was born on September 12, 1969 in Moscow, the son of two Russian Jews. They were lucky: they were able to emigrate to the United States in 1976, bringing young Max with them. Mr Boot, whose parents fled a strongly antisemitic regime in the USSR under Leonid Brezhnev, once said, “I would sooner vote for Josef Stalin than I would vote for Donald Trump,” even though the USSR under Comrade Staling might well have sent Mr Boot and his family to a concentration camp; the Soviet leaders really didn’t like Jews very much.

In other words, Mr Boot has all of the intuitive judgement of a mud clod.

We have previously noted how Mr Boot specifically, and many of the neo-conservative in general, don’t think much of our individual liberties, or certainly didn’t when it came to mandating vaccinations against COVID-19. Mr Boot, who dearly loves having American troops all over the globe and has been a student of military history and strategic studies but has never served in the military himself, fretted that it would be a disaster for the United States to pull out of Afghanistan, though what more could be accomplished in that fetid and festering sewer that we hadn’t been able to accomplish in the 19½ years we had already been there he could not articulate.

And here he goes again!

We can’t let Ukraine lose. It needs a lot more aid, starting with artillery.

by Max Boot | Monday, June 13, 2022 | 7:00 AM EDT[1]If you are stymied by The Washington Post’s paywall, you can read the whole thing here, for free.

Max boot, trying to look all journalist-like in his fedora. From his Twitter biography.

The battle of Donbas — with momentous implications for the future of Ukraine and the entire postwar world — is poised on a knife edge.

The Ukrainians are resisting bravely, but they are suffering terrible casualties and slowly losing ground. They are able to fire only 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, compared with 50,000 rounds a day from the Russians. The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition for their old Soviet artillery, and they don’t have enough Western artillery tubes to make up for the shortfall.

I am reminded of the old poem about how “for want of a nail a shoe was lost,” then a horse, then a rider, then a battle, then a kingdom. We cannot afford to see Donbas lost for want of artillery shells.

If Russian dictator Vladimir Putin captures this region, after having already secured a land corridor from Crimea to the Russian border, he will hold roughly a fourth of Ukraine, including its industrial heartland and most of its Black Sea coast. The Ukrainian economy is already in dire shape (estimated to shrink by 45 percent this year). Putin will then be in a position to further squeeze the rump state, while preparing a final offensive to finish it off.

Even a limited Russian victory will send a dangerous signal to the world that the West is weak and aggression pays. We must send lots more aid to Ukraine now to avert the loss of Donbas and to enable a counteroffensive to retake ground already occupied, but not yet fortified, by the invaders.

Emphasis in the original.

The most obvious Ukrainian need is for more artillery tubes and shells. The Biden administration has already provided 108 M777 155mm howitzers and more than 220,000 artillery rounds. More recently, it promised to send four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars) and ammunition with a maximum range of roughly 45 miles. That is wholly insufficient; even the 220,000 rounds would not last five days at current rates of use.

Huh? If, as Mr Boot stated just a couple of paragraphs previously, that the Ukrainians are able to fire only 5.000 to 6,000 artillery rounds per day, 220,000 rounds would last a whole lot longer than 4½ days. He’s actually talking about the Russians’ rate of fire, not the Ukrainians’.

The West should be sending hundreds of howitzers and multi-launch rocket systems, thousands of rockets and hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds. This should include Excalibur GPS-guided rounds for the M177 (range: 24 miles) and Army Tactical Missile Systems for the Himars (range: 186 miles). Those longer-range munitions would enable the Ukrainians to target Russia’s artillery, rockets and supply lines without risking their new weapons close to the front lines. Of course, it will take time to train Ukrainians on these systems, but they have shown they are fast learners.

That, of course, is not all Mr Boot wants to send to Ukraine to fight the Russians: he also called for sending  MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, F-16 fighter jets, A-10 “Warthog” ground-attack aircraft and Patriot air-defense systems.

An obvious question: if “we can’t let Ukraine lose,” as he claims in the column title, what does he want to do if Ukraine is about to lose even after such arms are sent to them?

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Max Boot and Allahpundit Are Very Worried About Our Friends in Ukraine

In 1939, President Roosevelt started sending military equipment to the United Kingdom, covertly at first, then more openly, to hold off the Third Reich. Following Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, we started sending military aid to the USSR as well. There were worries that Adolf Hitler would see this as the United States being at war with Germany, and it was bandied about that that was exactly what the President wanted, for Germany to declare war on the United States. After all, we had 3,600 miles of deep, blue water between the United States and German-occupied France, so there was really nothing Der Führer could do to us!

But if we start sending more and more supplies and weapons to Ukraine, we will be putting American troops and contractors on the ground in Poland . . . and Russia has the weaponry to strike Poland. Perhaps Mr Boot thinks that Vladimir Putin would never dare to strike an American installation, especially one on the soil of a NATO member nation, and I will admit that it would seem to be a stupid, stupid move. But we need to remember: Mr Putin is perfectly capable of stupid moves!

Yes, I have a vested interest in this: my older daughter is, as I type, preparing for a year-long deployment to Kuwait with the Army Corps of Engineers. While it seems unlikely, increased American presence in Poland, to ship more weapons to Ukraine, could very well result in a change of orders; the first people needed for an American installation in Poland would be the Corps of Engineers, and surveyors, and my daughter is a surveyor!

Russia has thousands of battlefield range and short range nuclear weapons. Just how would the United States, and NATO, respond if, feeling his back against the wall, Mr Putin used one, just one, lower-yield nuke against a shipping point for American and NATO weapons to Ukraine? He might well believe that such a tactic would so scare the US and NATO about a potential all-out nuclear war that we’d just stop and back off.

And, quite frankly, that should be the response. Ukraine is not worth a nuclear war!

Mr Boot and the neoconservatives have spent a lot of time and ink and bandwidth arguing for an aggressive, muscular, and interventionist American foreign policy, with the second Persian Gulf War against Iraq being the most obvious example. The first was started by Saddam Hussein, and if the ender President Bush had not been so eager to limit that war, and just gone a couple of days more, we could have eliminated Saddam Hussein in 1991. Because we didn’t do that, his son got in his head to rectify that, and we had the debacle of the second Iraqi war, which did topple President Hussein, but Iraq today is hardly a democratic paradise. We went into Afghanistan because we had to, to respond to al Qaeda’s attack on the United States, but we stayed and stayed and stayed, far beyond the mission to destroy al Qaeda and kill Osama bin Laden, stayed 10½ years after Mr bin Laden was sent to his eternal reward, and what was accomplished? Afghanistan is once again ruled by the Taliban, who have been reimposing the same policies that they had during their first reign.[2]Full disclosure: on my daughter’s previous deployment to Kuwait, she wound up in Afghanistan, though she was apparently in little danger.

I get it: 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.” The neo-cons, most of whom never spent a day in uniform, seem to have a romantic vision of the combat which they’ve only seen in the movies. If Mr Boot wants to see more American and NATO equipment sent to Ukraine to fight the Russians, then he needs to be on one of those convoys, in uniform, carrying an M4 rifle, and ready to fight himself. After all, he did note that there are “foreign volunteers” fighting with Ukraine’s ground forces. He needs to sign up himself.

References

References
↑1 If you are stymied by The Washington Post’s paywall, you can read the whole thing here, for free.
↑2 Full disclosure: on my daughter’s previous deployment to Kuwait, she wound up in Afghanistan, though she was apparently in little danger.