Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Dear Helen Ubiñas: if you want to see the reason why, look to your own newspaper

I have previously noted Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas, several times, based primarily on column from December of 2020, “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” She wrote:

    The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

    By the end of 2020, that number more than doubled: 447 people gunned down.

    Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

    At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

      “A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

    That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

That was thirteen months ago. What brings it to my attention again? Her column on Friday, and its subtitle:

    For two mothers touched by gun violence: ‘Pray, pray, and pray some more.’

    Numbers tend to attract attention around here; the people behind them, not always so much.

    by Helen Ubiñas | Friday, January 7, 2022

    At 12:55 p.m., on the eve of the new year, a 17-year-old died from a gunshot wound he suffered a day earlier.

    He was the 562nd person to be killed in Philadelphia in 2021.

    And, as it would turn out, the last homicide victim of the year.

    His name was Nasheem Choice, and three days later, on Jan. 3, he would have celebrated his 18th birthday.

There’s much more at the original, a good column which you should read.

But it’s that subtitle, noting that “around here” it’s the numbers which get attention, not the individuals who were killed. What do I see in the Inquirer, a newspaper which publisher Elizabeth Hughes vowed to make “an antiracist news organization”? I see that 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 five separate stories, a whole lot more than the two or three paragraphs most victims get.

Then there was the murder of Samuel Sean Collington, a Temple University student approaching graduation. Mr Collington was a white victim, allegedly murdered by a black juvenile in a botched robbery. The Inquirer then published 14 photographs from a vigil for Mr Collington, along with another story about him. Five separate stories about the case of a murdered white guy.

The Inquirer even broke precedent when it came to Mr Collington’s murder by including the name of the juvenile suspect in the case, and delving into his previous record.

Compared to the coverage the Inquirer gives concerning black victims, that’s some real white privilege there!

Oh, it’s not as though the Inquirer doesn’t publish stories about black victims, at least when it comes to black victims who are ‘innocents’. The murder of Samir Jefferson merited two stories, and four stories about the killing of 13-year-old Marcus Stokes.[1]I did note my suspicion that young Mr Stokes might not have been quite the innocent the Inquirer, and writer Anna Orso, made him out to be. A story is merited if the victim was a local high school basketball star, and cute little white girls killed get tremendous coverage: a search of the newspaper’s website for Rian Thal returned 4855 results! But for the vast majority of black victims, Inquirer coverage is a couple paragraphs, mostly in the late evening, and which have disappeared from the main page of the newspaper’s website by morning.

Did the newspaper’s editors think that no one would notice this? Or is it that the editors have so internalized their own biases that they didn’t realize it themselves?

I’ve said it dozens of times: black lives don’t matter to the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer, regardless of what they say, because their actions, their editorial decisions, speak far more loudly, and clearly, than their words.

Can Miss Ubiñas change that? Can she bring it to the editors’ attention? I have tried, but I’m just a nobody, and the editors seem to need a Somebody to point out what the readership can clearly see.

References

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Charlotte ex-patriot aghast to find “Let’s go, Brandon” bumper sticker in North Carolina

My good friend William Teach alerted me to this article via a tweet:

From The Charlotte Observer, yet another McClatchy newspaper:

    There’s a real danger behind the juvenile ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ meme

    by Peter Horn | Friday, January 7, 2022 | 4:30 AM EST

    Back in Charlotte for the holidays, I was out on a walk when I noticed my parents’ neighbor’s truck. It’s a big truck. White, newish, plastered with bumper stickers in dense but ordered rows — mostly political, some football-related. Among many others was “Mean Tweets 2024” and “Let’s Go Brandon.”

    This, from a purportedly serious man. A grown-up by most senses of the word, likely born in the 1950s. A man with grown children of his own, a respectable career, two bowls of water by his mailbox for passing dogs and a nativity set in the front yard.

    I stopped and stared for a moment, wondering, how did we get here?

Much of the author’s dismay can be found in his bio at the bottom of the article:

    Peter Horn is a Charlotte native and a southern ex-pat for the greater part of the last decade. He currently lives in San Francisco and works as an investor and freelance writer.

Oh, he’s a native of Charlotte, but lives in ‘Frisco!

Also see: William Teach in The Pirate’s Cove: There’s A Real Danger In #LetsGoBrandon Or Something

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden carried the Pyrite State by a huge margin, 11,110,250 (63.48%) to President trump’s 6,006,429 (34.32%), but it was even worse in San Francisco, where Mr Biden won 378,156 (85.26%) to 56,417 (12.72%). Mr Horn was apparently never so triggered[1]In this, I am using the Urban Dictionary’s definition: “1.) *popular and well known definition* triggered is when someone gets offended or gets their feelings hurt, often used in memes to … Continue reading as he was when visiting his parents, because there probably aren’t a lot of “Let’s go, Brandon!” stickers seen around the feces-covered sidewalks and streets of the City by the Bay. While Mr Biden carried Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, by a wide margin, 378,107 (66.68%) to 179,221 (31.60%), Mr Trump carried the Tarheel State as a whole, 2,758,775 (49.93%) to 2,684,292 (48.59%). Hey, you go to Carolina, and you’re likely to see Trump stickers and signs!

    I don’t mean the polarization. How did we reach this level of absurdity, where ”serious people” are comfortable putting thinly veiled ”F— Joe Biden bumper stickers on their trucks, like a group of 12-year-old boys snickering over walkie-talkies because surely Mom and Dad don’t know that word really means penis.

Well, it’s certainly one way to express one’s feelings about the current President without resorting to actual profanity. But if Mr Horn has been triggered, maybe it’s because he left his safe space on the left coast.

    For those unfamiliar with “Let’s Go Brandon,” it’s a viral slogan that’s coded criticism of President Joe Biden. It started when an NBC Sports reporter suggested fans at an Oct. 2 Talladega race were chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” during an interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown. They weren’t. They were actually chanting “F— Joe Biden.”

    It’s all just so juvenile. So pathetic.

One wonders: was Mr Horn similarly appalled at this, from his adopted home state?

    Hundreds of Artists Have Come Together to Say ‘Fuck Trump’
    Los Angeles gallery iam8bit launched the ongoing virtual exhibit on the President’s birthday

    By Liz Ohanesian -June 17, 2020

    On Sunday, June 14, the Echo Park-based creative production studio and art gallery iam8bit launched fucktrump.art, a hybrid virtual exhibition and protest where all of the works read “Fuck Trump” and are available to download for free as web and print resolution files so that anyone can share the message online or IRL.

    The date of the launch was significant—it was Donald Trump’s birthday and Flag Day, as well as a day often used to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride—and the message was strong. Jon M. Gibson and Amanda White, co-founders of iam8bit, describe it as a “primal scream.”

    “It’s like punctuation for us at this point,” says White of the phrase “Fuck Trump,” adding that their hope is for “everyone who disagrees with the administration to be comfortable screaming it at the top of their lungs.”

Google search for “Fuck Trump signs” and you’ll get hundreds of images. But, perhaps for Mr Horn, that’s different somehow.

    But as I found myself thinking more about it, trying to find an historical parallel for this intersection of creeping illiberalism and giant oversized red shoes, it struck me how dangerous this moment in time really is.

    Because every minute spent shaking one’s head at the latest display of self-debasement by the GOP is a minute not spent on the insidious machinations behind the veil. Save for a few notable exceptions — who are currently being driven out of the party with pitchforks and tiki torches — in 2022 Republicanism is Trumpism.

You can follow the embedded link to read the rest, but it boils down to one thing: Mr Horn was using his sight of a “Let’s go, Brandon” bumper sticker primarily as the supposedly snappy beginning for his complaint that evil reich wing Republicans are trying to prevent legal voters from voting. No, we want legal voters to vote, but we want to restrict the ability of the left for cast fraudulent votes. I may have mocked him for his supposed triggering, but I doubt he actually was triggered; he just needed a starting hook for what he wanted to write.

Mr Horn suffers from a kind of denialism: he really can’t believe that other people would think differently from him, that other people might take different choices than he would. That’s not an uncommon problem for much of the American left.

References

References
↑1 In this, I am using the Urban Dictionary’s definition: “1.) *popular and well known definition* triggered is when someone gets offended or gets their feelings hurt, often used in memes to describe feminist, or people with strong victimization.”
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Will James White come back to life in 8½ years?

Even in a conservative state like Kentucky, we have some soft-on-crime prosecutors!

    ‘Remorseful about what happened.’ Lexington man facing murder charge takes plea deal

    by Jeremy Chisenhall | Thursday, January 6, 2022 | 10:04 AM EST

    Dontate Burruss, photo by Fayette County Detention Center.

    A Lexington man has accepted a plea deal in a 2020 deadly shooting which will see him serve 10 years behind bars.

    Dontate Lamont Burruss, 48, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after previously being charged with the murder of James White outside the Motel 6 on Newtown Court in June 2020. Burruss was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison without the possibility of probation.

    “Mr. Burruss has been from the very beginning, day one, remorseful about what happened,” Burruss’ attorney, Bonnie Potter, said in court Thursday. “ … He has accepted responsibility.”

There’s more at the original, though the photo of this convicted killer was not part of it.

Mr Burruss had been locked up for 527 days since his arrest on August 28, 2020. With credit for time already served, Mr Burruss will be back out on the streets in a shade more than 8½ years, just before his 56th birthday.

According to the Fayette County Detention Center records, Mr Burruss was charged with first degree manslaughter, first degree robbery, and a probation violation, which means he had been convicted in the past. The jail record on Mr Burruss shows six previous mugshots, dated January 10, 2020, August 21, 2019, January 4, 2019, November 9, 2017, February 8, 2017, and July 7, 2015. This is not a guy who simply made a very bad mistake; this is a man who has been a career criminal! Yet Fayette Circuit Judge Thomas L. Travis requested ‘mediation’ in this case due to ‘complex issues.’

What’s ‘complex’ about it? He shot a man, and the man died! Yet this career criminal is going to see daylight, as a free man, sometime around July 29, 2029, while James White will still be stone-cold graveyard dead. Mr Burruss made a self-defense claim at some point, but his self-defense occurred as he was robbing his victim. That’s murder during the commission of a felony!

There is no reason to have any confidence that someone with Mr Burruss’ record will ever be not a criminal upon his release; why would anyone, Judge Travis included, want to give him a lenient sentence?

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Has the Lexington Herald-Leader abandoned the McClatchy Mugshot Policy?

We have noted, dozens of times, how the Lexington Herald-Leader, in going along with the McClatchy mugshot policy, has declined to print mugshots of accused defendants, even when those defendants are already convicted felons, and even when the subjects are accused of murder and are still on the loose.

But now, the Herald-Leader is doing the community a service, with an accused murderer on the loose. Can you spot the difference?

Kenneth Strange, photo via Nicholasville Police Department. Click to enlarge.

Police: Central KY murder suspect on the run, ‘considered armed and dangerous’

by Jeremy Chisenhall | Wednesday, January 5, 2022 | 4:48 PM EST | Updated: Thursday, January 6, 2022 | 7:58 AM EST

Nicholasville police were looking for a local man who they believe killed a woman, the police department announced Wednesday.

Kenneth Strange, 54, was wanted for the alleged murder of a woman who was found shot dead at Strange’s residence on Lauren Drive in Nicholasville in the early-morning hours Wednesday, police said. Police have obtained warrants for Strange’s arrest, they said.

“Strange is currently on the run and should be considered armed and dangerous,” Nicholasville police said in a Facebook post. “We are currently working with several jurisdictions across the commonwealth in an attempt to locate him. If anyone knows where Strange might be please contact your local law enforcement agency.”

There’s more here.

Can you think of anything, anything at all, which makes publishing Mr Strange’s photo different from say, that of Jo’Quon Anthony Edwards Jackson, or Juanyah J Clay?

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How new District Attorney Alvin Bragg will reduce crime in Manhattan

In January of 2023, The New York Times will publish a major article noting how crime has dropped in Manhattan under new District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Manhattan DA to stop seeking prison sentences in slew of criminal cases

By Larry Celona, Tamar Lapin, Tina Moore, Reuven Fenton and Bruce Golding | January 4, 2022 | 11:32 AM EST

Who needs soft-on-crime judges when the district attorney doesn’t even want to lock up the bad guys?

Manhattan’s new DA has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing, according to a set of progressive policies made public Tuesday.

In his first memo to staff on Monday, Alvin Bragg said his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption.

“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available,” the memo reads.

Assistant district attorneys must also now keep in mind the “impacts of incarceration,” including whether it really does increase public safety, potential future barriers to convicts involving housing and employment, the financial cost of prison and the racial disparities over who gets time, Bragg instructed.

In cases where prosecutors do seek to put a convict behind bars, the request can be for no more than 20 years for a determinate sentence, meaning one that can’t be reviewed or changed by a parole board.

There’s more at the original.

The cited article is from not The New York Times, our nation’s newspaper of record, not the one with All the News That’s Fit to Print proudly emblazoned on its masthead, but the New York Post. Site searches of the Times website failed to turn up any stories on this. New York magazine, the Gothamist, amny and Fox News covered it, but it simply wasn’t news that the Times saw as fit to print, at least not if their site search engine works. Fox noted:

In a stunning reversal of traditional law enforcement procedures, Bragg sent a memo stressing “diversion and alternatives to incarceration,” in pursuing prosecutions … by not sending criminals to jail. The no-jail time exceptions are murder, a crime that involves someone’s death, or a felony. And several serious crimes, like armed robbery, are being reduced to misdemeanors, which could mean dangerous thugs will end up back on the streets without seeing the inside of a jail cell.

And even if you murder someone, Bragg says his office will limit sentences to 20 years. He is refusing to seek the state-mandated “life without parole” for murderers, which would include terrorists, cop killers and even serial killers.

It’s easy to see what will happen: people who are victims of crime will be far less likely to report those crimes, because Mr Bragg has just told everyone that he’s not going to prosecute crimes seriously. After all, why bother, if you know that your assailant will end up right back on the street, with zero punishment, and just might be in a position to seek retribution for reporting the crime in the first place?

Philadelphia voted in a “social justice”, George Soros-supported prosecutor in Larry Krasner, and the result has been 499 homicides in 2020, just one short of the record set in 1990, during the crack cocaine wars, and then blew past that with 562 killings in 2021. Mr Krasner claims that crime is down, overall, statistically speaking, but the probability is that fewer crimes that actually occur are being reported. After all, why bother?

So, Mr Bragg, like Mr Krasner, will report that his policies have reduced crime in Manhattan, when, in reality, they will have reduced the reporting of crime. That’ll make the numbers look better, but for the victims, perhaps not so much.

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My inferior understanding prevents me from seeing the obvious brilliance of his argument

Dr Jorge J Rodríguez V tells us, in his Twitter biography, that he is a “A DiaspoRican Theo-Socio-Storian contextualizing systems historically made Divine || PhD-Historian-Administrator || All Tweets My Own (He/Him/His/El)”. Now, I have no way to verify anything in his word salad of a biography, but shall assume that it’s all accurate.

On New Year’s Day, he told us:[1]The tweet shown in the article is a screen capture, just in case he deletes it. If you click on the image, it will take you to his original.

It’s not just that I think schools shouldn’t be open until the end of January, I don’t think *anything* should be open until the end of January. We should be paid to stay home and provided food for three weeks and we should try an *actual* lockdown to combat the #Omicron surge.

This nation has pushed vaccines as the sole answer and get #Omicron has persisted. Even if the rates of death are lower, people are still dying. And if people aren’t dying, many are getting long COVID.

I have family members who didn’t fully recover from COVID for eleven months. I know many people who died months after “recovering” from COVID because of the toll the virus took on their lungs or heart or blood. Just letting the virus run it’s course is not good public health.

If the military gets *billions* for new jets, we the people can get *billions* to stay home for a few weeks and slow this surge. Our nation is so scared of a lockdown because of its effect on the economy but the economy doesn’t matter if people are dead or unable to work.

It just makes me so angry. The whole thing. And knowing so many people in my community have to go to poorly ventilated schools with minimal testing in two days makes me even more angry.

I think I underestimate how much capitalism has stunted our collective imaginations. When invited to dream about a different way of doing things, the first instinct of so many is to call it unrealistic as opposed to sit in the possibility and explore alternative ways get there.

The first paragraph is from the original tweet, while each subsequent one is from a separate tweet in the thread.

Now, Dr Rodríguez is, purportedly, an educated man. Yet somehow, some way, he hasn’t managed to grasp the notion that the electricity, natural gas, and water going to people’s homes doesn’t just magically appear there, but is produced at power plants and pumping stations, and if everything is locked down, that means those utility plants close down. It’s January, and people will get awfully cold in their homes without electricity and natural gas. They’ll get very thirsty without water.

Of course, other things like, oh, food, have to be picked up from the grocery store. If everything is locked down, then the grocery stores are closed, too. I sure hope that you have three weeks of food at your house!

Well, let’s say that you are warned, and have the time to go shopping before the lockdown. Grocery stores don’t normally have three weeks of food for their customers on hand, but have to get deliveries, every day, to replenish the shelves. Many food items are perishable, and people don’t buy them three weeks before eating them. Do you want to eat three-week-old bread?

But hey, with the electricity out, in January, you can just put your perishables in a critter-proof box outside, and you’ll have nature’s refrigerator keeping things cold for you!

References

References
↑1 The tweet shown in the article is a screen capture, just in case he deletes it. If you click on the image, it will take you to his original.
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Morbid math

The flood waters are finally starting to drop. The crest was 30.15 feet, which did not bring it close to our house, so we’re fine, if still stranded; the only road out is still underwater.

The highest water ever recorded, the 41.00 feet (guesstimated, since the river gauge failed), got into the crawlspace of our home last March, and into the garage, but did not get into our house itself.

As of 9:10 AM EST, the Philadelphia Police Department has not updated its Current Crime Statistics page; the image to the left, on which you can click to enlarge, is a screen capture. Since the page is supposed to be updated “during normal business hours, Monday through Friday,” I have to wonder what has happened. Perhaps the responsible person is taking his New Year’s Day holiday today?

The homicide number for 2021 is still stuck on 559, even though The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that “at least 560 people in Philadelphia were murdered, a bigger tally than in more heavily populated cities including New York and Los Angeles”. If the homicide total is 560, using Philly’s 2020 census figure of 1,603,797, the homicide rate works out to 34.92 per 100,000 population, and a couple more increase it only marginally.

The Philadelphia Shooting Victims Dashboard, which claims to be accurate through the end of the year, stated that there had been 2,327 recorded shootings in the City of Brotherly Love, 486 of which were fatal, and 1,841 in which the victim survived. That means that the gang bangers are pretty poor shots, given that only 20.89% of attempted murders by gunfire were successful, but that’s an ‘improvement’ on the 18.44% success rate in 2020.[1]414 homicides by shooting, out of 2,245 total shootings. Yeah, I know: my math is kind of morbid sometimes.

We have previously reported that KSDK, Channel 5, the NBC affiliate station in St Louis, crowed about the Gateway City having reduced its homicide numbers back to “pre-pandemic levels.”

Experts said the 2020 spike in violence was driven largely by the pandemic and high tensions following civil unrest. More lock downs, people losing jobs and strained relationships between communities and law enforcement all led to more murders University of Missouri – St. Louis Criminology Professor Richard Rosenfeld said.

Yet, if it was the COVID-19 pandemic — and I hate the word pandemic — and the killing of George Floyd, then why did shootings increase in Philadelphia by 3.65%, and total homicides by 12.22%?

We noted that the homicide numbers in Philly had increased by 15.61% since it became apparent that Joe Biden had defeated President Trump in the election. Why, it’s almost as though the evil reich wing Mr Trump had nothing to do with the homicide rates!

Philadelphia is still plagued by the same government, of Mayor Jim Kenney, a Democrat, District Attorney Larry Krasner, a George Soros-funded stooge more interested in slapping down the police than prosecuting criminals, and the appropriately-named Police Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, a bureaucrat appointee of Mr Kenney’s, who couldn’t lead a two-car parade. Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office on January 7, 1952, when Harry Truman was President, and George VI was still King of England. It has been three generations since Philly was led by a Republican!

George Floyd died a year and a half ago, and Donald Trump left the White House 348 days ago. The city leadership surrendered to the mob, and the coronavirus panic and shutdowns did not slow down the rate of violent crime in the city.

That was almost two years ago, and since then we’ve had vaccines, no cost vaccines, against the virus, and many — certainly not all in Philly — of the pandemic restrictions lifted, yet the rate of killing in Philly has only increased. At some point, maybe even leftists ought to be asking why the policies of an unbroken for generations Democratic leadership in Philadelphia haven’t worked.
————————–
Updated: 11:55 AM EST

It looks like someone has been trying to update the Current Crime Statistics page, but just isn’t very good at it. It now shows 562 homicides for 2021, which puts the homicide rate above 35, at 35.04 per 100,000 population.

References

References
↑1 414 homicides by shooting, out of 2,245 total shootings.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us what’s important to them

I suppose that I shouldn’t really be surprised.

Not everybody reads the newspaper, or, in my case, the digital newspaper, in the morning of New Year’s Day, and, when it comes to The Philadelphia Inquirer, some of the stories the editors think less important disappear quickly. Oh, they don’t disappear forever, but unless you know where to look, you won’t find them on the main page of the Inquirer’s website.

But the tweet reproduced at the right[1]This is a screenshot, but if you click on the image, it will take you to the Inquirer’s original. sure seems to characterize the newspaper well. An actual gun battle in the city’s streets, something I would see as a rather important story, disappeared from the main page, though there were two stories on it buried deeply.

Instead, in the main page’s “Latest” column, screen captured at 8:44 AM EST today, and reproduced below — you can click on the image to enlarge it — those stories were gone, gone, gone, while the advertising article noted in the tweet was prominently featured. I’ve said it before: black lives don’t matter to the editors of the Inquirer, but it seems that advertorial money certainly does.

A site search for Club Risqué failed to turn up anything in the Inquirer over the Philadelphia Police spotting two suspects in the murder in front of Club Risqué, even though the local television station, Fox 29, covered it, as did, as did Robert Stacy McCain, a blogger with roughly zero connection to Philadelphia or Pennsylvania.

There are, however, five separate stories referencing the January 6th Capitol kerfuffle.

It’s so obvious that even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal ought to be able to see it: the almost entirely white Capitol kerfufflers have already been mostly arrested and charged, and the Justice Department continues to try to identify others, while the two suspects in the Club Risqué murders, suspects who are still on the loose, probably still on the loose in Philadelphia, and whom the police could use help in locating and apprehending, are black.

Nope, much better to have an advertorial on buying glasses on the main page, and that’s because black lives don’t matter to the editors and publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer!

References

References
↑1 This is a screenshot, but if you click on the image, it will take you to the Inquirer’s original.
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High water!

SSG Pico bought tickets for her and me to see the Oakland — never Las Vegas! — Raiders play the Baltimore Indianapolis Colts today, but the one road in or out from our farm is underwater. Our place isn’t in any danger; even the record flood of a guesstimated 41.00-foot crest didn’t get in the house, though it did get in the garage and crawlspace.

But we have sparktricity, propane, food, water and internet, so life is still good.

There has been some flooding damage in Madison County, but we don’t live in Madison.