Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Killadelphia A trauma nurse laments over all of the bodies which are brought into her emergency room

As I do every weekday morning, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and I saw that three more people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards yesterday. 486 homicides ÷ 320 days elapsed = 1.51875 per day x 365 days = 554.34375 projected homicides for the year. With only 14 more killings needed to tie the record of 500, at the current rate that should happen in just 9 days, or on November 25th, which is Thanksgiving Day.

Philadelphia Inquirer writer Robert Moran reported, briefly, on one of the killings:

A 67-year-old woman was fatally shot during an attempted robbery inside a check-cashing store Tuesday afternoon in the city’s Ogontz section, police said.

About 1:10 p.m., the woman, who was believed to be the owner, was shot in the chest inside Any Checks Cashed at 5812 Old York Rd., which is next door to a day-care center. She was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

That’s it, that’s all, a 67-year-old woman’s life, and death, reduced to two paragraphs. There were a couple more which told readers that the police had very little information thus far. The story had been superseded by others, and was not visible on the Inquirer’s website main page.

But it was this article, blurbed on that main page as “I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?” that caught my attention, though the title, when I opened it, was different:

A trauma nurse’s letter to a Philly shooter | Opinion

I wish you would wait before you pick up that weapon. I wish you could come talk to me. I would’ve begged you not to do this.

by Ruqiyya Greer, For The Inquirer | Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Dear Gunman,

When the alarm goes off, I know that first responders are on the way with your target.

We stand outside, dressed in plastic gowns, gloves, and bonnets. We are sweating profusely as we wait for your target’s arrival. We hear the sirens from a distance. They get louder as they get closer. They race down the hill and come to an abrupt stop. We can smell the burning rubber of the tires. The door swings open and there lays your target, bloody and unconscious.

We struggle to pull his lifeless body, covered with bullet holes and blood, out of the car. It becomes a struggle to get him out as the moisture from the blood makes it difficult to get a tight grasp.

We get your target to the trauma bay as we empty several code carts full of medical supplies, injecting several lifesaving medications into his still body. Techs stand in line taking turns performing chest compressions. The trauma team cracks his chest open to manually compress his heart to keep what little blood he has left circulating.

After we have exhausted all measures, the attending doctor announces, “time of death.” The techs bag his cut-up clothes as well as his body. Two tags are applied, one to his big toe and the other to the outside of the body bag.

There’s more at the original, describing what Ruqiyya Greer, the author and a trauma nurse in the emergency room at Temple University Hospital, sees and feels, practically every day, on the job. And she points out what Mr Moran’s brief stories, the Inquirer in general,[1]We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly … Continue reading and the Police Department figures, obscure, because it’s inconvenient reporting: the vast majority of the homicide victims in the City of Brotherly Love are young black males, sometimes men, and sometimes still boys.[2]The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 … Continue reading

She concluded:

There’s so many times I want to walk away, but if I do, I will be deserting my community and my culture. I can’t do that. But these days it feels like I am a nurse in the middle of a war. I wake up every day knowing that I will have to watch another Black man take his last breath. And over what?

Our ancestors fought for our freedom; they were murdered for our freedom. I don’t think they risked it all for us to murder each other.

Please, before you pick up that gun again, placing your life at risk, risking your freedom and ending another life, talk to whoever plays a significant role in your life. A parent, uncle, pastor. You are about to make the worst mistake of your life.

I really don’t like quoting so many paragraphs from an Inquirer article, but Miss Greer’s concluding point is important: she is asking the potential shooters out there — people who will almost certainly never read her ‘letter’ anyway — to think before they act.

But they don’t think, at least they don’t think about the act itself. Oh, they may well think, and plot, and plan about how they are going to get away with it, but seem to give little thought or care about what will happen if they do get caught, very possibly spending the rest of their miserable lives locked up.

Miss Greer has been far more honest than most. While so many Philadelphia politicians want to blame the guns, she noted the people who “pick(ed) up that gun,” the people who shot, and frequently killed, other people, most often members of their own communities.

References

References
↑1 We have noted previously Elizabeth Hughes, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her determination to make her newspaper “an anti-racist news organization,” has turned it into exactly that, a newspaper more concerned with racial identity and sorting out its news coverage that way than it has been about the “public’s right to know.” The vast majority of homicide victims in Philadelphia are black, but when one black gang banger kills another black gang banger, it isn’t really news anymore, not to the Inquirer. Instead, the paper paid more attention to the accidental killing of Jason Kutt, a white teenager shot at Nockamixon State Park, an hour outside of the city. That’s four separate stories; how many do the mostly black victims get?
↑2 The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, noted that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings; non-Hispanic black Americans make up only 38.3% of the city’s population. The current statistics for this year I have not been able to find.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader does race-based reporting A white man accused, but not convicted, has his photo published; a black man who has pleaded guilty to killing a man, no mugshot published

Jemel Barber. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Jemel Barber is not a nice guy. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported this afternoon that Mr Barber has pleaded guilty to manslaughter:

    2 died in a robbery, gunfight spree in Lexington. Shooter pleads in 1 case

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | November 16, 2021 | 7:44 AM EST | Updated: 4:16 PM EST

    A Central Kentucky man has pleaded guilty in one of two fatal shootings during a string of robberies and gunfights in Lexington.

    Jemel Barber, 22, pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter and second-degree robbery more than four years after he shot and killed 40-year-old Tyrece Clark, according to court records. He was initially charged with murder and first-degree robbery, but his charges were amended down after a plea agreement was reached.

    Barber told police after the deadly shooting on July 23, 2017, that he showed up at a Lexington motel with a rifle, intending to rob Clark of narcotics and/or money, according to court records.

    But Clark started shooting after Barber knocked on his door, Barber told police, so he shot back. The plea agreement was reached after attorneys disputed whether or not Barber could claim self-defense. Barber maintained that Clark was the aggressor and his attorneys continued to blame Clark as the court case played out.

Prosecutors recommended a sentence of 15 years on manslaughter, and 10 years on the robbery conviction; sentencing is scheduled for February 11, 2022. Not yet determined is whether the sentences will run concurrently or consecutively.

There’s more at the original, but what is not at the original is the convicted killer’s mugshot. The McClatchy Mugshot policy holds that:

Publishing mugshots of arrestees has been shown to have lasting effects on both the people photographed and marginalized communities. The permanence of the internet can mean those arrested but not convicted of a crime have the photograph attached to their names forever. Beyond the personal impact, inappropriate publication of mugshots disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness.

Mr barber, however, is not someone who has been arrested but not convicted; he’s guilty.

Nor was he a very nice guy prior to his latest arrest. The Fayette County Detention Center page on Mr Barber had five separate mugshots of the malefactor, dated September 28, 2017, November 14, 2017, February 14, 2018, April 19, 2018, and then his last arrest, on May 2, 2018. Born November 25, 1998, he was just 18 when he was first arrested, at least as an adult, and wasn’t yet 19 when arrested the last time. He was still 18 when he killed Tyrece Clark.

However, while the Herald-Leader kept Mr Barber’s mugshot out of their website, they applied their mugshot policy rather inconsistently in the next story:

    Hour-long standoff at Stanton gas station leads to arrest of sexual assault suspect

    by Christopher leach | November 16, 2021 | 4:20 PM EST

    Craig Worm, photo by Stanton Police department, and published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, November 16, 2021.

    A sexual assault suspect from South Dakota was arrested at a gas station in Powell County after a nearly hour-long standoff with police Tuesday morning, according to a Facebook post by Stanton Police Department.

    Police said they were called to Airport Market in Stanton just before 8:30 a.m. for reports of a man who was firing a gun inside the store. When police and deputies with the Powell County Sheriff’s Office arrived, they found a man with a handgun inside a vehicle.

    That man was later identified as Craig Worm, 50, of South Dakota, according to police.

    Worm asked to buy cigarettes before firing at the store’s ceiling and saying, “now call police,” the store owner told WAVE 3.

    Worm barricaded himself inside his vehicle for approximately one hour before surrendering, police said.

There’s more at the original, including Mr Worm’s mugshot.

Unlike Mr Barber, who has been accused of a serious crime, but not convicted of anything, the editors at the Herald-Leader decided to publish his photo, despite their concern about “those arrested but not convicted of a crime hav(ing) the photograph attached to their names forever”. Mr Worm could still be acquitted.

The difference? Mr Barber, now a confessed killer, is black, while Mr Worm, accused but still innocent until proven guilty of sexual assault, is white. If there is another distinction, it certainly isn’t obvious.

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#MaskMandates and fewer fans in the stands Maybe if the Lexington Herald-Leader told the unshaded truth, the newspaper would have more subscribers

If there is one thing that keeps the Lexington Herald-Leader in business, it is the newspaper’s reporting on University of Kentucky sports. In our poor state, UK’s men’s basketball team has been a source of pride for decades, winning eight NCAA championships, the first in 1948. Rupp Arena, where the Wildcats play, was once the nation’s largest basketball venue.

Crowds were extremely limited last season, due to COVID-19 restrictions, and the team had an unexpectedly poor season. This year, with some veteran players returning, along with some experienced transfers and top freshmen, much is expected of the Wildcats.

The Herald-Leader has now noted that attendance has been unexpectedly low:

    Empty seats in Rupp Arena are sending UK a message. Is anyone listening?

    by Mark Story | November 15, 2021 | 4:14 PM EST

    One of the pressing questions this year as America’s mass-spectator sports moved out of 2020’s pandemic-inspired attendance restrictions is whether the crowds were going to come back en masse to the ballgames?

    Locally, University of Kentucky football fans have answered with an emphatic yes.

    In the 61,000-seat Kroger Field, UK sold out three of its four home Southeastern Conference games this fall — Florida (announced attendance of 61,632), LSU (61,690), Tennessee (61,690) — and just missed on its fourth vs. Missouri (58,537).

Skipping further down was the impetus for the story:

    While the sample size is small, attendance has so far this season been soft for UK basketball games in Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center.

    For the Wildcats’ 2021-22 exhibition opener against Kentucky Wesleyan, the announced attendance in Rupp — the number of tickets distributed to the event — was 17,133 in the 20,545-seat venue.

    The figure for the second exhibition, against Miles College, was 17,814.

You can follow the link to read the rest for yourself.

Mark Story, one of the newspaper’s sportswriters, suggested that part of the reason was worry over the COVID-19 panicdemic. But, in the end, he said that it was his guess that paying customers were disappointed in the cupcakes UK was playing in the early part of the season, and that we’d see something different when the hated University of Louisville Cardinals come to town on December 22nd.

But it was this photo, accompanying the article, which caught my attention. If I counted correctly, there are 38 fans depicted whose faces can be seen clearly, and only 17 cam be seen wearing face masks correctly. Several others can be seen with masks below noses, below chins, at least one with a mask hanging down from one ear, and others with no masks visible at all. Yet UK mandates the wearing of facemasks at all indoor sporting events:

    Among the policies, fans will be required to wear a face mask as they watch the game and move around Rupp Arena, regardless of vaccination status. The policy also applies to staff and vendors.

We have reported, more than once, that despite individual venues requiring the wearing of face masks, those ‘requirements’ are being honored in the breach. Just yesterday, at the Kroger on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky, despite this sign being posted by the interior door of the vestibule, requiring masks of all customers, around half, and possible more, of the customers were not wearing masks. Another sign, outside the exterior doors, said “Masks strongly encouraged for fully vaccinated individuals,” meaning that the signs were inconsistent with each other, but there was, of course, no attempt made that I saw, or have ever seen, to enforce either sign.

Kentuckians just don’t like those masks!

Mr Story’s story? While he mentioned the COVID-19 panicdemic possibly having something to do with lowered attendance, he never wrote the first word about the mask mandate potentially contributing to fewer fans in the stands.

This is just poor journalism, or typical journolism,[1]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 … Continue reading from the Herald-Leader. To have mentioned that the mask mandate might have possibly caused lower attendance would have wholly violated the paper’s editorial stand in favor of masks. Whether Mr Story actually mentioned it, and an editor removed it, or he simply ignored it due to what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal’s editorial stand, I do not know, but the newspaper is not telling the whole truth to its readers.

Media bias does not normally come in the form of outright lies to readers. Rather, it is far more likely to come from the choices of what facts to report, and what facts to conceal. In this case, the Herald-Leader omitted a major potential cause in reduced attendance, when that major potential cause contradicted its editorial stance. Perhaps Mr Story sneaked that in, with the photo chosen to illustrate the article, but no mention of the mask mandate was made in the story; the source I used to note the mandate came from WLEX-TV.

Newspapers are suffering from reduced readership all across the country; maybe if they told readers the unvarnished truth, they’d have more subscribers.

References

References
↑1 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.
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Weathering the storm

My good friend William Teach noted, ten days ago, an article by Saul Griffith, in which he claimed that, to save Mother Gaia, there was one thing that we absolutely had to do:

    Now, finally, much of the world has become convinced, first-hand, that global warming is not only real but heating up more rapidly than we expected, unleashing irreversible impacts. Many people feel despair and helplessness in the face of doomsday predictions already in evidence. And yet, I’m optimistic that we can solve this problem in time to keep our planet livable for future generations.

    I have to be optimistic. I’m the father of young children and I want them to not only survive what humanity has done to our planet, but experience the awe of the natural world that I enjoyed as a child. But I’m also a scientist, and I approach the problem like an engineer. What do we need to build to fight global warming? Can we do it in time to keep the planet under the 1.5-2.0 degrees centigrade warming that can avoid a tipping point toward climate disaster?

    Squinting at the data, I see a way forward, but the urgency can’t be underestimated. The answer is actually quite simple and requires no miracle technology: we must electrify everything, fast. That means not just the supply-side sources of energy; we’ve got to electrify everything on the demand-side—the things we use in our households and small businesses every day, including cars, furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and dryers. I’m optimistic because over the last two decades the advances and cost reductions in electric vehicles, solar cells, batteries, heat pumps, and induction cooking mean that what we need can now be purchased at roughly price parity with the fossil fuelled incumbent.

Mr Griffith doesn’t bother to tell us just how poorer Westerners, much less poorer people in the rest of the world, can simply afford to go out and replace working gas ranges with electric induction cooktops, or gas or heating oil furnaces with electric ones. Even the environmentally-conscious show, “This Old House,” showed remodeling of a house, in cold Massachusetts, adding a new gas-fired furnace, in 2018, because gas heat is simply more reliable and efficient in New England. I did have to replace my electric HVAC system last spring, as the old one was destroyed in the record flooding last March.[1]The river gauge jammed at 28.18 feet, so the flooding crest was guesstimated, but it was the historic crest, topping the previous record of 39.37 feet. The flooding got into the crawl space … Continue reading That was $5,896.00, and fortunately we had the money, but a lot of people around here did not.

In January of 2018, our first winter here, an ice storm knocked out the electricity for 4½ days . . . and our house was ell-electric. Electric heat pump for heating and cooling, electric range for cooking, and an electric water heater for hot water. My wife headed to our daughters’ apartment in Lexington and stayed there, nice and comfortably, but I had to stay at home, to take care of the critters, and make sure the plumbing didn’t freeze. I was able to get a lukewarm shower the second morning, as the water in the tank had cooled but wasn’t cold, but that was the extent of it.

By the time the sparktricity was restored, it was down to 38º F inside the house. Fortunately, the weather outside was in the upper twenties to mid thirties that week; had it been down in the teens or lower, it could have been a much worse problem.

Now, our house is a fixer-upper, which we knew when we bought the place. One thing my darling bride (of 42 years, 5 months and 27 days) wanted was a gas range; almost everybody wants a gas range! But, after that first winter, and 4½ days without electricity, and a farm which is at the end of the line as far as Jackson Energy Cooperative is concerned for restoring power, we decided: a gas — propane in our case — water heater and fireplace for backup heating would be a very wise thing.

Our propane fireplace. Click to enlarge.

Yesterday evening, they came into play! A serious storm knocked out power not just to us, but much of the county. It was raining hard, and was very windy. But that propane fireplace did its job, keeping the house warm.

Mrs Pico was not at home at the moment; a hospital nurse, she wouldn’t get off until 7:30 PM, so supper hadn’t been cooked when the electricity failed. It was when she arrived home that she told us how widespread the power outage was. But, with that gas range, supper was no problem.[2]The electric pilot didn’t work, but the caps could be easily lit with a match. The oven will not work without electricity. It wasn’t the supper we had planned, hot wings, because we cook those with an electric air fryer, but my younger daughter — our daughters were visiting for the weekend — whipped up bacon and eggs on the range top.

Oil lamp and candles on the kitchen counter.

Of course, it was dark in the house, but candles, and a oil lamp — more fossil fuel there! — provided illumination.

Had Saul Griffith had his way, the house would have cooled down uncomfortably, and there’s have been no cooked meal for us. Morning showers? He’d not have wanted us to be able to take them.

As it happened, the sparktricity came back on a few hours later, but I remembered January of 2018; since Mrs Pico was had volunteered for an extra shift this morning, a shower was necessary for her.

Still, to quote Game of Thrones, winter is coming. My closest neighbor has told me that the power has been out here for as long as two weeks in the past, when bad snow and ice storms have brought down power lines. We are now prepared, though Mr Griffith doesn’t want us to be.

References

References
↑1 The river gauge jammed at 28.18 feet, so the flooding crest was guesstimated, but it was the historic crest, topping the previous record of 39.37 feet. The flooding got into the crawl space underneath our house, but stopped one concrete block, about 7½ inches, below the wooden structure. Our house was saved, but the HVAC system was lost.

Flood insurance is expensive. One woman I know had flood insurance, but to keep the expense manageable, she had a $10,000 deductible, and her losses were slightly under $10,000.

↑2 The electric pilot didn’t work, but the caps could be easily lit with a match. The oven will not work without electricity.
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CDC doctor says that achieving ‘herd immunity’ is unlikely even with universal vaccination

The vaccinated Joel Embiid is out for the 76ers due to a positive test. Quarterback Ben Roethlisburger, who is fully vaccinated, is out today for the Pittsburgh Steelers due to COVID-19. Yet somehow, while everyone is trashing Aaron Rodgers, no one seems to note that fully vaccinated players are also testing positive. Now, the CDC are saying that ‘herd immunity’ is not an achievable goal:

The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines.

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months.

The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread.

“We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” he said.

If such is the case, vaccination appears to be personally useful, but its societal usage is questionable. If none have proven “reliable at blocking transmission of the virus,” what is the justification for compelling vaccination? At this point, choosing not to get vaccinated puts an individual at greater danger, but it’s a danger for himself, without being a proven greater danger to others.

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A few real journalists challenge the #woke journolism of the credentialed media

Bari Weiss is not a conservative; she’s very liberal in her politics, though just plain not #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading enough for the young wokes in The New York Times newsroom. Glenn Greenwald is not a conservative; he’s very much on the political left as far as an American would be defined, though he now lives in Brazil. And Andrew Sullivan is hardly a conservative, either.

But these three journalists have one thing in common: they stand for freedom of speech and accuracy in journalism!

    When All The Media Narratives Collapse

    In case after case, the US MSM just keeps getting it wrong.

    by Andrew Sullivan | Friday, November 12, 2021

    The news is a perilous business. It’s perilous because the first draft of history is almost always somewhat wrong, and needs a second draft, and a third, and so on, over time, until the historian can investigate with more perspective and calm. The job of journalists is to do as best they can, day by day, and respond swiftly when they screw up, correct the record, and move forward. I’ve learned this the hard way, not least in the combination of credulousness and trauma I harbored in the wake of 9/11.

    But when the sources of news keep getting things wrong, and all the errors lie in the exact same direction, and they are reluctant to acknowledge error, we have a problem. If you look back at the last few years, the record of errors, small and large, about major stories, is hard to deny. It’s as if the more Donald Trump accused the MSM of being “fake news” the more assiduously they tried to prove him right.

    And these mass deceptions have consequences. We are seeing this now in the Rittenhouse case — a gruesome story of a reckless teen with a rifle in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha. The impression many got from much of the media was that a far-right vigilante, in the middle of race riots, had gone looking for trouble far from home and injured one man, and killed two, in a shooting spree.

    Here’s the NYT on August 26, the morning after the killings: “The authorities were investigating whether the white teenager who was arrested … was part of a vigilante group. His social media accounts appeared to show an intense affinity for guns, law enforcement and President Trump.” Rittenhouse’s race is specified; the race of the men he killed and injured were not (they were also white).

    Almost immediately, the complicated facts became unimportant. The far right viewed Rittenhouse as a hero — which he surely wasn’t. He had no business being there with an AR-15. The MSM and far left viewed him as a villain, appalled that he was being elevated, in Jamelle Bouie’s words, “as a symbol of self-defense.”[2]I have my own criticism of Mr Bouie’s work here. (Another NYT article, painting Rittenhouse as a MAGA fanatic, did note at the very bottom of the page: “Supporters of Mr. Rittenhouse said he was being attacked by the mob and acted in legitimate self-defense.” So they did have a caveat.)

    But notice how the narrative — embedded in a deeper one that the Blake shooting was just as clear-cut as the Floyd murder, that thousands of black men were being gunned down by cops every year, and that “white supremacy” was rampant in every cranny of America — effectively excluded the possibility that Rittenhouse was a naive, dangerous fool in the midst of indefensible mayhem, who, in the end, shot assailants in self-defense. And so when, this week, one of Rittenhouse’s pursuers, Gaige Grosskreutz, admitted on the stand that Rittenhouse shot him only after Grosskreutz pointed his pistol directly at Rittenhouse’s head a few feet away, it came as a shock.

There’s much more at the original, and I absolutely encourage reading it. Mr Sullivan goes into many examples of recent journalistic ‘errors,’ and notes what we wicked reich wing conservatives have been saying for years now: the mistakes the credentialed media make all seem to be on one direction, the direction which feeds into the narrative of the American political left, of the American Democratic Party.

Was Kyle Rittenhouse “a naive, dangerous fool in the midst of indefensible mayhem, who, in the end, shot assailants in self-defense”? While I have never called him a “naïve, dangerous fool,” I have said, “Young Mr Rittenhouse helped to create the situation by traveling to Kenosha and appearing on the scene with a firearm. That does not mean it wasn’t self-defense; it seems pretty clear that it was. But he should never have gone there, certainly not armed.”

    We all get things wrong. What makes this more worrying is simply that all these false narratives just happen to favor the interests of the left and the Democratic party. And corrections, when they occur, take up a fraction of the space of the original falsehoods. These are not randos tweeting false rumors. They are the established press.

The trial of Mr Rittenhouse reminds me of that of George Zimmerman. Mr Zimmerman should never have followed Trayvon Martin, and certainly should have backed off when dispatchers told him to do so, but that did not give Mr Martin the right to assault him. Local law enforcement knew that Mr Zimmerman’s actions were legal self-defense, but political pressure pushed the state of Florida to appoint a special counsel and prosecute him anyway. It was really no surprise that Mr Zimmerman was acquitted, because the state had no case. The left waxed wroth, but they’d had their trial, and the jury exonerated Mr Zimmerman. Prosecutors in Kenosha surely knew, unless they are just boneheadedly stupid, that they didn’t have much of a case, but my guess — and it really is a guess — is that they were unwilling to take the political heat for dropping the charges against the defendant; they’re leaving it up to a (supposedly) anonymous jury.

But, as Mr Sullivan noted, the liberals in the credentialed media — even ones who masturbate during Zoom meetings — can’t escape their own narrative that he simply must be guilty!

This is why I have so often referred to ‘journolists’ as opposed to journalists. 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 have noted, many times, how publisher Elizabeth Hughes has openly admitted that her goal is to filter reporting, filter (supposedly) straight news stories, in The Philadelphia Inquirer through a political sieve, rather than report the unvarnished facts.

Newspapers can, and should, have editorial and OpEd sections; with word count and column inch limits having been mostly replaced by nearly unlimited bandwidth, there should be more, not less, of such sections. The credentialed media ought to be perfectly free to engage in expressions of opinion. But for the credentialed media to regain lost credibility, they need to report the news as straight news, and not report opinion as fact.

That’s the difference between journalism and journolism.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 I have my own criticism of Mr Bouie’s work here.
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A Republican Form of Government

In his New York Times biography, it states that “Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine.” Yup, you’re right: that’s pretty much the definition of an American political liberal. Mr Bouie on Friday set out to claim that the Guarantee Clause to the Constitution means that Democrats can fight gerrymandering by Republicans:

    Madison Saw Something in the Constitution We Should Open Our Eyes To

    by Jamelle Bouie | Friday, November 12, 2021

    Not content to simply count on the traditional midterm swing against the president’s party, Republicans are set to gerrymander their way to a House majority next year.

    Last week, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled statehouse passed a new map that would, in an evenly divided electorate, give it 10 of the state’s 14 congressional seats. To overcome the gerrymander and win a bare majority of seats, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, Democrats would have to win an unattainably large supermajority of votes.

    A proposed Republican gerrymander in Ohio would leave Democrats with two seats out of 15 — or around 13 percent of the total — in a state that went 53-45 for Trump in 2020.

    It is true that Democrats have pursued their own aggressive gerrymanders in Maryland and Illinois, but it is also true that the Democratic Party is committed, through its voting rights bills, to ending partisan gerrymandering altogether.

Of course, Maryland, in which the Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in both houses of the state legislature, wants to gerrymander the state’s lone Republican congressman out of office.

The Democrats in Congress are concerned because there are simply more “red” states than blue ones; Joe Biden is President only because the blue states are mostly larger in population than the red ones. The Democrats were perfectly fine with gerrymandering decades ago, when the South was solidly Democratic, and most elections were determined not in November, but in the earlier Democratic primaries.

    The larger context of the Republican Party’s attempt to gerrymander itself into a House majority is its successful effort to gerrymander itself into long-term control of state legislatures across the country. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and other states, Republicans have built legislative majorities sturdy enough to withstand all but the most crushing “blue wave.”

And in those states, Republicans seized control of state legislatures after Republican candidates won under district maps passed by Democrats. In Kentucky, the GOP finally won control of the state House of Representatives in the 2014 elections, in districts drawn by a previously Democrat-controlled state House, and signed into law by Governor Steve Beshear, a Democrat. In districts drawn by Democrats, Kentucky Republicans won 75 out of 100 state House districts in the 2020 elections.

In the 2004 elections, President George W Bush got zero votes in five Philadelphia precincts; John Kerry won twenty congressional districts by greater percentages than Mr Bush’s best district. In 2008, John McCain got zero votes in a whopping 57 city precincts, and four years later, Mitt Romney was blanked in 59 precincts. The Philadelphia Inquirer, of course, could find no evidence of fraud in any of this, but it points out a fact that everyone knows, but the Democrats just don’t want to talk about: Democrats, and Democrat votes, are very heavily concentrated in our major cities. How would you redistrict Philadelphia to not gerrymander the state of Pennsylvania? Remember: it’s the weight of Philadelphia that carries statewide elections for Democrats. President Trump would have easily carried the Keystone State in 2020, which he lost by 80,555 votes, were it not for Joe Biden’s 471,305 margin in Philly. Mr Trump just barely overcame Hillary Clinton’s 475,277 margin in the city to carry the state in 2016. Even President Obama’s 2012 309,840 vote margin in Pennsylvania would have been a loss without his 492,339 vote win in Philadelphia.

The problem for Democrats isn’t that Republican legislatures have gerrymandered the districts; the problem is that the people have gerrymandered themselves with their choices of where to live.

    In Article IV, Section 4, the Constitution says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

Mr Bouie claims that the Guarantee Clause should mean something other than what it was understood to mean, a government not headed by a King or Prince. Rather, he wants it to mean, citing Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v Ferguson, that Congress should have the right of approval of each state government:

    Still, a broad understanding of the Guarantee Clause might be a potent weapon for Congress if a Democratic majority ever worked up the will to go on the offensive against state legislatures that violated basic principles of political equality.

That cuts two ways; Congress is sometimes controlled by Republicans!

But, it seems to me that the wisest way to read, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” given that “Republican” is capitalized in the original document, is that the United States should guarantee to every state that it will be governed by Republicans! 🙂

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Philly ties for 3rd place!

It wasn’t really that much of a stretch to guess that 475 wouldn’t be the final homicide number for Thursday, and it wasn’t: the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page shows that 476 Philadelphians have been murdered so far this year, up from ‘just’ 428 on the same day last year. Last year being a leap year, the gang bangers had an extra day to hit that 428 number.

The numbers are ugly: 476 homicides in 315 days works out to 1.5111 per day, or a projected 551.5555, rounding up to 552 for the year.

With 50 days left in the year, and ‘only’ 24 murders needed to tie the all-time record of 500, set in 1990, the homicide rate would have to drop to slightly less than a third of what it is right now, and, at this point, only God could make that happen. At the current rate, the city should tie the all-time high in just 16 days, or Saturday, November 27th.

Mayor James Kenney (Democrat-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (Soros stooge-Philadelphia), and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw (Kenney Puppet-Philadelphia) have certainly done a fine, fine job, haven’t they?

But hey, Philadelphians must like all of those bodies stacked up like cordwood, because they just re-elected George Soros stooge District Attorney Larry Krasner. No one can say that they didn’t know what they were getting.

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Killadelphia

This brings the homicide total in the City of Brotherly Love to 475 for the year; one more, and Philadelphia ties 1989’s Bronze Medal for most murders! Of course, as of this writing, Thursday isn’t over, and the police could still report more killings.

    Nicetown fire that killed 2 ruled arson

    The fire occurred on the 1400 block of West Jerome Street shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday.

    by Robert Moran | Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2021

    A predawn house fire Thursday that killed two men in the city’s Nicetown section has been ruled an arson and is being investigated as a homicide case, police said.

    Firefighters and police responded to the blaze just before 4 a.m. on the 1400 block of West Jerome Street. Two men in their 50s were found in an upstairs bedroom and were transported to Temple University Hospital and Einstein Medical Center. Both were pronounced dead shortly before 5 a.m. Their names were not released.

    Investigators from the Philadelphia Fire Department and the ATF Arson Task Force found an accelerant was used inside the front door.

    Police said the motive for the arson was unknown.

One thing is certain: whoever started this fire didn’t care for anyone’s life. The 1400 block of West Jerome Street consists entirely of Philadelphia row houses. The Google Maps street view shows them as primarily brick buildings, presumably with brick firewalls between each unit, but there’s still plenty of century-old wood involved, and the arsonist could have burned down a whole side of the street.