Author Archives: Dana Pico

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The New York Times and the Ministry of Truth

Anybody who has ever written for a collegiate newspaper, a category which would include me, has had at least a few dreams about being a reporter and writer for The New York Times.[1]Though not a journalism major, I wrote for the Kentucky Kernel for two years while in the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce in the early 1980s.

Of course, to become a writer for the greatest newspaper in the world, you had to be well-educated, and it helped if you went to one of the top schools, such as the Columbia University’s School of Journalism. To have been well-educated, at least as far as a liberal arts degree is concerned, there is virtually no way you could not have read George Orwell’s 1984, the dystopian novel about life in a totalitarian society.

So, one would think that no one could ever suggest, in the pages of the Times, such a thing as Mr Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, where the main character, Winston Smith worked, would ever be a good idea. But if one did think that, one would be wrong.

How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis

These steps, experts say, could prod more people to abandon the scourge of hoaxes and lies.

By Kevin Roose[2]Mr Roose is a technology columnist for The Times, and the host of the “Rabbit Hole” podcast. His column, “The Shift,” examines the intersection of technology, business, and … Continue reading | February 2, 2021 | 11:54 AM EST

Last month, millions of Americans watched as President Biden took the oath of office and, in a high-minded Inaugural Address, called for a new era of American unity.

But plenty of other Americans weren’t paying attention to Mr. Biden’s speech. They were too busy watching YouTube videos alleging that the inauguration was a prerecorded hoax that had been filmed on a Hollywood soundstage.

Quite the statement! Mr Roose seems to believe that if I didn’t watch the inaugural, I must be some evil or deluded conspiracy theorist. As it happens, I did not watch the inaugural, but I did not because I did not wish to see the transition to someone with Joe Biden’s and the Democratic Party’s repugnant policies.

Or they were melting down in QAnon group chats, trying to figure out why former President Donald J. Trump wasn’t interrupting Mr. Biden’s speech to declare martial law and announce the mass arrest of satanic pedophiles.

Or maybe their TVs were tuned to OAN, where an anchor was floating the baseless theory that Mr. Biden “wasn’t actually elected by the people.”

It’s a long article, in which Mr Roose suggests:

  • “Unless the Biden administration treats conspiracy theories and disinformation as the urgent threats they are, our parallel universes will only drift further apart, and the potential for violent unrest and civic dysfunction will only grow.”
  • We must have a “holistic understanding of what the spectrum of violent extremism looks like in the United States, and then allocate resources accordingly.”
  • “The Biden administration could set up a “truth commission,” similar to the 9/11 Commission, to investigate the planning and execution of the Capitol siege on January 6. This effort, (Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy) said, would ideally be led by people with deep knowledge of the many “networked factions” that coordinated and carried out the riot, including white supremacist groups and far-right militias.”
  • Several experts with whom Mr Roose spoke “recommended that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a ‘reality czar.'”

Mr Roose graciously granted that this “sounds a little dystopian,” but continued to say that we needed to listen to the arguments for such suggestions, including tapping into the algorithms used by Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to ferret out bad, bad, bad messages.

Really? As we noted previously, Twitter already takes sides on the issue of ‘transgenderism,’ and bans ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering,’[3]‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a … Continue reading as though the issue is settled, and no dissent can be tolerated.

Was Mr Roose simply reporting? The Times has already published articles claiming that Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence, and that Twitter’s bans on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes freedom of speech. The Times told us how wonderful it was that Jeff Bezos was able to deplatform Parler, but lamented that some of those who lost their speech on Parler migrated to Gab and Rumble.[4]Full disclosure: I maintained a Parler account, and have a Gab account.

Until the nation reckons with the self-inflicted wounds stemming from an under-regulated, unreformed social media information architecture, President Biden’s calls for healing and national unity won’t produce substantial, lasting results. The new administration needs a long-term plan to confront the escalating threat, as far-right insurgents migrate from one platform to the next.

The Parler hack is the place to start. It indicates that moderation of violent, racist, anti-democratic content will increasingly lead to migration of that same hateful content. For instance, the deplatforming of Parler triggered a virtual stampede to similar forums like Gab and Rumble. Analysts have already documented Parler groups re-forming and spreading evermore hateful content on Telegram and a host of smaller platforms.

When the Times prints OpEd pieces claiming that social media are “under-regulated (and) unreformed,” what are we ro conclude other than the Times, which so jealously and zealously protested that its own Freedom of the Press should not be restricted in New York Times Co v United States, believe that other people’s speech and publications must be more strictly regulated, that those who decline to conform to the Accepted Wisdom — meaning: the wisdom of the left — should simply not be allowed to make their cases or present their views?

If Chad Malloy writes an article claiming that ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ is bad, horrible, and should not be allowed, the Times will publish it, and Twitter will be perfectly happy to allow positive tweets referencing it. If William Teach tweets “Since the gender confused have a much higher chance of having mental issues and suicidal tendencies, let’s put them around military grade weapons for Social Justice, am I right?” he gets suspended by Twitter, and not allowed to express that viewpoint, despite the fact that every point he made is true.[5]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy.

Twitter suspended the account of Catholic World Report for noting that Dr Richard Levine, appointed by President Biden to become Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services is “a biological man identifying as a transgender woman”, despite the fact that the statement is completely accurate.[6]Dr Richard Levine claims that he is female and goes by the name “Rachel.” As noted in our Stylebook, we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their biological sex and given … Continue reading

The Times apparently wants some form of a Ministry of Truth, but, like the one for which Winston Smith worked, its business is making certain that whatever Big Brother says is not contradicted by history or the facts. “Ignorance is Strength” the Party says in the book, and it seems that The New York Times wants everybody to remain ignorant of any information, any views of which the Times disapproves.

The late William F Buckley, Jr, famously said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” It wasn’t so long ago that the editors of the Times would have shaken their heads at conservative views, but nevertheless simply argued against them, rather than trying to stifle and stamp them out.

Today? All of that has changed! The editors now want a government agency to tell everyone what is true, and stamp out anything they feel is contrary.

References

References
↑1 Though not a journalism major, I wrote for the Kentucky Kernel for two years while in the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce in the early 1980s.
↑2 Mr Roose is a technology columnist for The Times, and the host of the “Rabbit Hole” podcast. His column, “The Shift,” examines the intersection of technology, business, and culture. You can find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. @kevinroose • Facebook
↑3 ‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by sex-specific terms referring to his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be.
↑4 Full disclosure: I maintained a Parler account, and have a Gab account.
↑5 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy.
↑6 Dr Richard Levine claims that he is female and goes by the name “Rachel.” As noted in our Stylebook, we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their biological sex and given names at birth.
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Is there no actual journalism practiced at The Philadelphia Inquirer?

It’s a pretty sad thing that I have come to check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page every weekday morning.[1]The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only. Well, this is Monday morning, and the first of February, so we get the homicide statistics for the month of January. And an even fifty people didn’t experience much Brotherly Love in the City during what is normally the coldest month of the year.

In last year’s just-barely-missed-the-record, Philadelphia saw 38 homicides in January. Fifty is a 31.58% increase. Fifty in 31 days is a rate of 1.6129 per day, which, if maintained throughout 2021, would mean 589 people killed in the city’s mean streets.

Yet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper of record for the city, the metropolitan area, and really the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, didn’t have the first hint of a story about this, at least not as of 11:38 AM EST, when last I opened the newspaper’s website.

Oh, there was plenty on the website’s main page. There was a big story about why the Inquirer was closing comments on its news stories, because “Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.”

How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or is it because the #woke in the newsroom, who got Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski fired to resign because he wrote an attention grabbing headline, but one of which the left wholly disapproved, didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions?

The Inquirer could post an OpEd piece by Patrick J Egan strongly in opposition to capital punishment,[2]Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment … Continue reading but make no mention of the one crime, murder, that can result in capital punishment, even as it has surged to record levels?

How could fifty homicides, occurring at a higher rate than during the previous year be so blithely ignored, be not considered newsworthy?

Oh, wait, I know! You have to have actual journalists on the staff to practice journalism. No wonder I’ve seen it called The Philadelphia Enquirer!

References

References
↑1 The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only.
↑2 Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment proponent is in office, while ignoring the fact that the previous Governor, Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed 47 separate death warrants during his four years in office, yet not one execution actually occurred.
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The New York Times and The Washington Post want to censor other people’s #FreedomOfSpeech WaPo OpEd piece argues that the Sedition Act of 1798 was a good idea

From 1984, Chapter 2:

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably: someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had used an oldfashioned pen, what he had been writing — and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.

Winston Smith knew that all evidence of incorrect thought needed to be erased, yet he couldn’t help from keeping his diary. Mr Smith had found the beautifully-paged blank book in the window of “a frowsy little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town,” the type of shop that Party members were not supposed to frequent, and just buying the thing had been a violation of discipline. George Orwell didn’t really imagine computers or word-processors or the horrors, horrors! of widespread self-publication on the internet, where anybody, anybody! could read things.

From the Editorial Page of The Wall Street Journal:

Speech and Sedition in 2021

The progressive press decides that dissenters should be suppressed.

By The Editorial Board | January 29, 2021 | 7:21 PM EST

Most Americans learn in school about flagship political excesses in U.S. history like Joe McCarthy’s 1950s inquisitions, the post-World War I Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Yet a recent Washington Post opinion piece purports to explain “what the 1798 Sedition Act got right.”

The law banned a wide range of political speech and publication. It was passed by the ruling Federalists to suppress the rival Democratic-Republicans, whom they saw as seditious. The Post piece argues that though their solution was “flawed,” the Federalists had reason to worry about “unregulated freedom of the press.”

The author of the referenced Washington Post OpEd piece is Katlyn Marie Carter, an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and currently a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. She is writing a book entitled “Houses of Glass: Secrecy, Transparency, and the Birth of Representative Democracy.” She argued:

Citing the problem of misinformation in 1801, Rep. John Rutledge Jr. (S.C.) did not mince words in identifying falsehood as a particular threat to democracy. “In a Republican Government, where public opinion rules everything, it is all-important that truth should be the basis of public information,” he asserted. If public opinion was ill formed — poisoned by lies, deception, misrepresentations or mistakes — the consequences could be dire. “Government, which is the preservative of the general happiness and safety, cannot be secure if falsehood and malice are suffered to rob it of the confidence and affection of the people.”

Rutledge’s words sound like a premonition. Democracies are uniquely dependent on public opinion and trust, which makes the truth crucial to their function — and early Americans knew it.

While the communications world in 1801 was a far cry from the world of smartphones and social media, the two shared a key similarity. When the Internet debuted, it prompted significant optimism that the ease of access to information would promote knowledge. Similarly, early Americans had faith that a newly expanded print media would spread enlightenment. But like today, this initial hope soon gave way to concern. By the late 1790s many concluded that the truth was actually endangered by unregulated freedom of the press; they believed the only way to secure the republic was to punish people for spreading lies. Otherwise, falsehood would poison public opinion and people’s trust in their elected officials would be unduly eroded.

Rutledge’s warning came as he argued for renewal of the Sedition Act of 1798, which among other things, criminalized “false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute.”

Who, I wonder, did Dr Carter believe would determine what was true and what was not? We noted earlier that the (purportedly) private publisher Twitter has, in effect, determined that transgenderism, the idea that people can change their sex through a combination of drug therapy and surgical procedures, is the truth, and speech arguing differently must be prohibited. The New York Times gave OpEd space to Andrew Marantz to claim that Free Speech is Killing Us, and Chad Malloy[1]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names … Continue reading to state that Twitter’s restrictions on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promote the freedom of speech. One side of the argument is simply to be suppressed, or, as Mr Orwell put it, “Ignorance is Strength.”

Twitter and Facebook and Joe Biden have all determined that the matter is settled, and therefore statements to the contrary are simply falsehoods, and ought to be suppressed. So far, so far! the government under President Biden hasn’t acted to declare such speech seditious, but private social media sites, which have near monopolistic publication control, apparently have.

Of course, President Biden has only been in office for eleven days now, so give it time; he just might try to use the power of government to shut people up.

The Journal continued to note articles by Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times calling for advertiser boycotts of Fox News, as did Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post. So much for “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” So much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”  Apparently these august credentialed media sources believe that Freedom of the Press means only their Freedom of the Press, 

I’ve reached the point where I’ve quoted too much from the Journal, and there is much more at the original. But just one more paragraph:

Much of American journalism, which was supposed to revert to its historic role as a check on those in power after Donald Trump left town, is now devoted to shutting down the commercial lifeline of other media. Think of the precedent for the next populist Republican President who might declare pro-choice publications “deadly.”

Of course, the last populist Republican President did not do that; the worry is that the current pro-abortion Democratic President might declare pro-life publications “deadly.”

That would include this publication!

The next step? Look for the left to start pressuring site hosting services to stop hosting sites like The Pirate’s Cove and The Other McCain and Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion and RedState because those sites don’t agree with what is apparently the Accepted Wisdom concerning transgenderism, and that’s simply unacceptable to the left. Because Parler used Amazon as its site hosting service, Jeff Bezos, owner of the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Washington Post was able to lights out the service.[2]Note that I had a Parler account. Parler was a free speech site, but, sadly, its software and presentation were poor.

The Pirate’s Cove uses the blog tagline, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all,” while The Other McCain has, “‘One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.’ — Arthur Koestler”. The left and the credentialed media want us to do the latter, just shut up.

I’ve never been very good at shutting up.

References

References
↑1 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names and biological sex.
↑2 Note that I had a Parler account. Parler was a free speech site, but, sadly, its software and presentation were poor.
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The truth will not set you free The truth will land you in Twitter jail

We have already noted that Twitter, and the left in general, do not like Freedom of Speech. When it comes to the subject of transgenderism, Twitter has already banned ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering.’[1]‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; … Continue reading The New York Times, which so strongly defended its right to Freedom of Speech and of the Press in New York Times Co v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), gave space in the OpEd section to Andrew Marantz to write “Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence.” Mr Marantz, while exercising his First Amendment rights, clearly does not like the unregulated speech of others. The Times had earlier given OpEd page space to ‘transgender’ activist Chad Malloy to claim that Twitter’s ban on ‘deadnamimg’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes the Freedom of Speech.[2]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their … Continue reading

Well, now our good friend William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove has been given a seven-day suspension by Twitter, because he did something really radical like tell the truth about the ‘transgendered.’ Mr Teach replied to Representative David E Price (D-NC 4th District) regarding his support of President Biden lifting the ban on ‘transgenders’ in the military along the lines of it being a really bad idea to have people with serious mental health issues who are prone to suicide around military grade weapons. Mr Teach told me, in an e-mail, that Twitter responded to his appeal by saying that his reply was “threatening,” and required him to delete it.

The truth is that the ‘transgendered’ are much more heavily prone to suicide. The Williams Institute of the UCLA School of Law, not exactly a right-wing site, reported:

Studies of the transgender population demonstrate that the prevalence of suicide thoughts and attempts among transgender adults is significantly higher than that of the U.S. general population. For example, transgender adults have a prevalence of past-year suicide ideation that is nearly twelve times higher, and a prevalence of past-year suicide attempts that is about eighteen times higher, than the U.S. general population. The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS), which is the largest survey of transgender people in the U.S. to date, found that 81.7 percent of respondents reported ever seriously thinking about suicide in their lifetimes, while 48.3 percent had done so in the past year. In regard to suicide attempts, 40.4 percent reported attempting suicide at some point in their lifetimes, and 7.3 percent reported attempting suicide in the past year.

In other words, Mr Teach’s Twitter reply that the ‘transgendered’ are prone to suicide was truthful . . . and Twitter suspended him for telling the truth.

The case of Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence technician, is instructive: he made at least two suicide attempts, and stole hundreds of thousands of pages of classified materials and dumped them to WikiLeaks. Mr Manning’s suicide attempts occurred in prison; what if he had not been in prison, but serving as an Army soldier, and had access to military weaponry?

I don’t know this to be the case, but I’m guessing that Mr Teach’s use of the term “gender confused” is what triggered Twitter’s Ministry of Truth to spot his reply.

What Mr Teach tweeted was a real, logical and truthful concern . . . but Twitter found the truth “threatening.” Jack Nicholson put it best:

Pierced Hearts, a Catholic site, had this story:

Twitter Locks Catholic Publication’s Account for ‘Hateful Conduct’

By Lisa Graas | January 29, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29, 2021 /Christian Newswire/ — On Sunday, Jan. 24, Catholic World Report received a notice from Twitter, alerting it that its account had been suspended for hateful conduct, and unless it removed the offending tweet, its account would remain suspended.

The tweet in question was a link to this Catholic News Agency news brief, written by Matt Hadro, and posted on CWR on Jan. 19, 2021. The tweet stated:

Biden plans to nominate Dr. Rachel Levine, a biological man identifying as a transgender woman who has served as Pennsylvania’s health secretary since 2017, to be HHS Assistant Secretary for Health. Levine is also a supporter of the contraceptive mandate.

Catholic World Report appealed the decision and Twitter has denied their appeal. Twitter considers the tweet hate speech, and unless Catholic World Report removes the tweet, its account will be suspended.

There’s more at the original.

But I have to ask: how is this tweet in question untrue? The tweet used Dr Richard Levine’s preferred name, “Rachel,” so it did not ‘deadname’ him. The tweet stated that Dr Levine is “a biological man identifying as a transgender woman,” a fact not in dispute. The tweet stated that Dr Levine has served as Pennsylvania Secretary of Health since appointed to the position by Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) in 2017, and that President Biden has appointed him to be Assistant Secretary of Health, which are, again, accurate statements.

Everything in the ‘offending’ tweet was true, but Twitter considered it “hate speech.”

The only thing I can conclude is that Twitter sees the truth itself as hate speech. Twitter can’t handle the truth!

In George Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth had three slogans:

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
For Twitter, those slogan seem to apply. If they can censor the non-approved views, if they can keep people ignorant of the fact that there actually are opposing views, it strengthens their position. The Freedom of Speech and of the Press that they apparently despise must lead to slavery, in the way Mr Malloy put it. War is Peace? Judging by Twitter’s uncritical acceptance of the #BlackLivesMatter rioters, and the left’s attempts to silence people like Andy Ngo who reported on the protesters’ violence, yeah, that fits, too.

References

References
↑1 ‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by sex-specific terms referring to his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be.
↑2 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names and biological sex.
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Chicago thinks it’s the murder capital; Philly says, “Hold my beer!”

I had noted on Twitter that the City of Brotherly Love was exceeding its one-short-of-the-record homicide rate for 2020, though we aren’t even through January, the coldest month of the year, and that The Philadelphia Inquirer hadn’t even noticed it:

I did see an article on the Inquirer’s website yesterday evening, noting that two men had been murdered in a bodega:

Two men fatally shot in North Philly store

by Mensah M. Dean | January 28, 2021 | 6:17 PM EST

Two men were fatally shot in a North Philadelphia store Thursday in what police are calling a double homicide.

Shortly before 1 p.m., police were called to the Al-Madinah Traders store in the 3600 block of Germantown Avenue, which sells jewelry, perfume, books, and other items. Police said passersby had found the men dead inside the store.

Police did not release the names of the victims, but described one as a man in his 40s who had been shot two times in the face, and the other as a man shot once in the head. His age was not given. Both were pronounced dead on the scene by medics.

As of Thursday evening, police had made no arrests and had not recovered weapons, they said.

The article author continued to note that the number of homicides was well above the same date in 2020, and that two other men had been murdered that morning, on in Kensington and one in the Wissinoming neighborhood.

So, that was four people sent early to their eternal rewards on Thursday, so I figured that I’d see 45 as the total when I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crimes Statistics page this morning. I was wrong; it wasn’t 45, it was 46!

That’s compared to 35 slaughtered by January 28, 2020, a 31.4% increase.

As noted two days ago, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer blamed the Police Commissioner, the ironically named Danielle Outlaw, for the Police Department’s response to the #BlackLivesMatter protests. The Editorial Board thought that Miss Outlaw’s response was too harsh; I thought it too lenient.

But what the Editorial Board did not do was blame the huge jump in homicides on Commissioner Outlaw, or Mayor Jim Kenney, or District Attorney Larry Krasner, the three top law enforcement officials in Philadelphia.

People think of Chicago under its ridiculous Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, as the nation’s murder capital. In 2020, the Windy City saw 769 homicides, 270 more than Philadelphia. But Chicago has a population of 2,710,000, while Philly’s is 1,579,000. Crime rates are compared by rate per 100,000 population, and that leaves Chicago with a homicide rate of 28.38 per 100,000.

Philadelphia laughs and says, “We can beat that!”, checking in with a murder rate of 31.60 per 100,000.

As of January 25th, Chicago had 44 homicides, compared to Philly’s 37, but the disparity in population means that the City of Brotherly Love was far ahead.

New York City saw a huge rise in homicides as well, from 319 in 2019 to 462 last year, 44.8%, fewer than Chicago’s or Philadelphia’s, even though its population is several times that of the latter two cities.

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York is on the fast track back to the Hell that Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned up, and even the liberal Michael Bloomberg didn’t trash. What New York and Chicago and Philadelphia all need is solid, conservative, no f(ornicating) nonsense mayors, district attorneys and police commissioners who will actually fight crime.

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The Editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer blame the puppet, not the puppet master!

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer. After years of rising homicide rates, they blame problems not on Mayor Jim Kenney, whom the Editors endorsed in his 2019 campaign, but on Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the ‘social justice’ policewoman from the left coast, and a near-total puppet of the Mayor:

Danielle Outlaw’s failure should push Kenney to ask for her resignation — but she didn’t fail alone

by The Inquirer Editorial Board | opinion@inquirer.com | January 27, 2021 | 4:46 PM EST

A little over 100 days into her job as Police Commissioner, Danielle Outlaw faced a trial by fire when peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd turned chaotic and destructive.

Of course, the #woke staffers of the Inquirer, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski, fully supported the #BlackLivesMatter protests of the Summer of Fire and Hate, and they would have complained about any police efforts to rein in the Mostly Peaceful Protests™.

It was a trial demanding leadership and preparation that she failed miserably. But this failure is not hers alone. It was compounded by a failure of leadership of Mayor Jim Kenney and other city officials, including Managing Director Brian Abernathy who has since resigned.

These failures are detailed in an investigation released Wednesday by City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart, conducted by Ballard Spahr, At Risk International, Inc., and input from a Community Advisory Council.

The report detailed the city’s failure to anticipate or prepare for the protests here despite their presence across the country, a failure to create a plan for handling protests despite the existence of a blueprint for just such events, and a series of disastrous and troubling decisions – from declining to activate an Emergency Operations Center to using tools and weapons on crowds and neighborhoods that created chaos instead of control.

At the height of protests about police brutality and violence, Philadelphia police responded with often militaristic force, using tear gas, rubber bullets and force, including in a neighborhood where children and innocent bystanders were present. The city’s failure to anticipate or plan meant there were not enough police or vehicles to stop or contain looting. The report also details the troubling inconsistencies between police response to Black Lives Matter protesters and their friendlier interactions with white vigilantes wielding baseball bats and racial slurs.

The only problem is that the Philadelphia Police Department didn’t use enough force!

There are no “troubling inconsistencies between police response to Black Lives Matter protesters and their friendlier interactions with white vigilantes wielding baseball bats and racial slurs” because the #BlackLivesMatter protesters were vandalistic and violent, and others were not.

Commissioner Outlaw was a ridiculous hire in the first place, coming from the Left Coast, and more concerned about ‘diversity’ than actually fighting crime. But the truth is simple: she was a ‘social justice’ hire of a ‘social justice’ mayor, and both his puppet and his tool.

What the City of Brotherly Love needs is something the Editorial Board of the Inquirer would never, ever accept: the complete replacement of every liberal Democrat officeholder with hardline, conservative Republicans. The Editors would be aghast, but really, could they do any worse?

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Are there no mirrors in the Biden Administration?

The much nicer, and better-looking, Dana commented, on Patterico’s Pontifications:

Boom:

The United States strongly condemns the use of harsh tactics against protesters and journalists this weekend in cities throughout Russia. Prior to today’s events, the Russian government sought to suppress the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression by harassing protest organizers, threatening social media platforms, and pre-emptively arresting potential participants. This follows years of tightening restrictions on and repressive actions against civil society, independent media, and the political opposition.

Continued efforts to suppress Russians’ rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, the arrest of opposition figure Aleksey Navalny, and the crackdown on protests that followed are troubling indications of further restrictions on civil society and fundamental freedoms. Russians’ rights to peaceful assembly and to participate in free and fair elections are enshrined not only in the country’s constitution, but also in Russia’s OSCE commitments, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in its international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We call on Russian authorities to release all those detained for exercising their universal rights and for the immediate and unconditional release of Aleksey Navalny. We urge Russia to fully cooperate with the international community’s investigation into the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny and credibly explain the use of a chemical weapon on its soil.

Putin now: Damn Navalny for surviving that poison!

Of course, in the good and noble United States, we would never try “to suppress the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression by harassing protest organizers, threatening social media platforms, and pre-emptively arresting potential participants.”

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Tulsi Gabbard Williams is very much a leftist, but the left hate her anyway Why? It's because she believes in our constitutional rights!

JVW, one of the regular posters on Patterico’s Pontifications, and the one who was least infected with #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, calls her his Little Aloha Sweetie, and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard Williams (D-HI 2nd) was the most sensible — not that that’s saying a whole lot — of the Cavalcade of Clowns running for the 2020 Democratic Presidential nomination. She is a true left liberal. From her Wikipedia biography:

Tulsi Gabbard (/ˈtʌlsi ˈɡæbərd/; born April 12, 1981) is an American politician and United States Army Reserve officer who served as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Elected in 2012, she was the first Hindu member of Congress and also the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress. In early February 2019 she announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election.[1][2]

In 2002, Gabbard was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives at the age of 21.[3] Gabbard served in a field medical unit of the Hawaii Army National Guard in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and was deployed to Kuwait from 2008 to 2009 as an Army Military Police platoon leader.[4][5][6] She was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2013 to 2016, when she resigned to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

Gabbard supports a two-tier universal health care plan that she calls “Single Payer Plus”[7][8][9] and strengthening Roe v. Wade by codifying it into federal law. Her position has evolved on the issue and she now believes that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”, although it is not a choice she would personally make.[10][11] She co-sponsored the Family Act for paid family and medical leave and endorsed universal basic income.[12][13][14] She opposes military interventionism,[15][16] although she has called herself a “hawk” on terrorism.[17] Her decision to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and her skeptical approach to two claims that he had used chemical weapons[18][19] were controversial.[20]

On March 19, 2020, Gabbard dropped out of the 2020 presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden. She had already withdrawn from her U.S. House re-election race during her presidential campaign and was succeeded by Kai Kahele on January 3, 2021.[21]

Mrs Williams greatest claim to fame in that primary was how she eviscerated Senator Kamala Harris Emhoff (D-CA) in the debates. That helped to torpedo Mrs Emhoff’s campaign, but, sadly, the eventual nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, selected her to be his vice presidential running mate. Mrs Emhoff is now Vice President of the United States, while Mrs Williams is out of public office. 🙁

But if she’s a leftist, Mrs Williams is one other thing: she’s a libertarian (not Libertarian), in that she believes in really radical things like freedom of speech. and privacy rights. The 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, disliked Mrs Williams enough that she ‘hinted’ that JVW’s Little Aloha Sweetie was actually a Russian stalking horse, and that the evil Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would use her as a third party candidate to try to split the liberal vote and hand the election to President Donald Trump.

Of course, Mrs Clinton has always found someone else to blame for her loss:

Clinton also said she thought Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 presidential nominee, was a Russian asset: “Yeah, she’s a Russian asset – I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate. So I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed.”

Bitter much? https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_yahoo.gif

From National Review:

Tulsi Gabbard: Domestic-Terrorism Bill Is ‘a Targeting of Almost Half of the Country’

By Brittany Bernstein | January 23, 2021 | 10:05 AM

Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic representative from Hawaii, on Friday expressed concern that a proposed measure to combat domestic terrorism could be used to undermine civil liberties.

Gabbard’s comments came during an appearance on Fox News Primetime when host Brian Kilmeade asked her if she was “surprised they’re pushing forward with this extra surveillance on would-be domestic terror.”

“It’s so dangerous as you guys have been talking about, this is an issue that all Democrats, Republicans, independents, Libertarians should be extremely concerned about, especially because we don’t have to guess about where this goes or how this ends,” Gabbard said.

No, we don’t have to guess about how things like this end; the results have been seen around the world.

She continued: “When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots, he lists a few others and at the end, even libertarians.”

She said her concern lies in how officials will define the characteristics they are searching for in potential threats.

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this?” Gabbard said.

As noted above, Mrs Williams supports abortion, but, how about that, she was concerned for the rights of those of us who are pro-life. We saw Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) try to impose her own religious test on then nominee to the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and now Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, because Mrs Barrett is pro-life, yet Mrs Williams, who is pro-abortion, could support the rights of, shockingly, Catholics!

I’m old enough to remember how the left were the ones who insisted that Freedom of Speech was absolute, and how The New York Times fought for Freedom of the Press. Today, it seems, that the left are all for restricting freedom for those with whom they disagree, using the January 6th kerfuffle — and yes, that’s what it was, a kerfuffle, blown wholly out of proportion by liberals — as an excuse, but, as we’ve noted before, the attempts to restrict freedom of speech were already happening.

The Washington Post, which has the tagline “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on its masthead, has, on its website, several articles all bemoaning the Freedom of Speech and of the Press.

The hypocrisy is astounding! The Post certainly defended its freedom of the press, in its own piece of the Pentagon Papers case, but now the editors and the newspapers’ columnists seem to want darkness to fall on people and opinions they dislike. No wonder the left hate Tulsi Gabbard Williams.

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The Biden Administration has no idea what poverty is like Warning: a nasty story is included

The Washington Post and Fox Business both had stories about the confirmation hearings of former mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-South Bend) to become Secretary of Transportation. Fox Business noted that Mr Buttigieg acknowledges Keystone Pipeline workers, thrown out of jobs due to President Biden’s cancellation of the border crossing permit into Canada, may need to get ‘different’ union jobs, while the Post omitted that part.

Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan (Ala.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) challenged Buttigieg over an order Biden signed Wednesday halting construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The project’s supporters say the order will cost thousands of jobs.

Buttigieg said the administration’s climate agenda ultimately will create jobs and stressed the importance of curbing the use of fossil fuels.

Note what Mr Buttigieg said, that the administration’s climate agenda ultimately will create jobs. Meaning, in a time of high unemployment, those to be created jobs don’t exist yet! Perhaps some of those Keystone XL Pipeline workers will get some of those newly created jobs, but what do they do between today and then?

Oops! For the left, that doesn’t really matter, does it? Mr Buttigieg never got his manicured hands dirty trying to weld two sections of pipeline together, or excavating material in the pipeline’s path. The sheltered son of University of Notre Dame professors, he never had to worry whether there’d be food on the table or a roof over his head.

This is the problem for the left elites: they claim to be all for the poor and the working class, but they have no concept about how the poor and the working class actually live. It’s nothing for Democratic Governors to issue shutdown orders that throw millions of people out of work, because they have no idea what missing even one paycheck can mean for people.

The Federal Reserve noted, in May of 2019 — before the economic dislocations caused by COVID-19 — that 61% of Americans could cover an unexpected, $400 emergency through cash, savings or a credit card that they could pay off at the next billing date. And that means that 39% could not cover such an expense.

And how would that 39% take care of that bill? Borrowing, selling something, or putting off paying something else. But Mr Buttigieg apparently thinks nothing of throwing those unionized workers out of a job; they’ll just have to get ‘different’ union jobs.

If they exist, that is.

I grew up poor, and while not quite as badly off as some other folks in eastern Kentucky, things were tight.

I’m going to tell you a story, a kind of nasty story, but a true one nevertheless. Sometime when I was in high school, the water pipe in the basement froze, and burst. My mother — my father was long gone — did not have the money to afford a plumber to repair it. In high school at the time, I was able to figure out how to shut the water off in the basement where it came out of the foundation wall, but repairing the burst pipe was beyond my knowledge.

We went without running water for at least two months! My mother worked hard, every day, my long-gone father hadn’t contributed a dime in years, and she just didn’t have the money to get it repaired. Our house was in town, so there was no outhouse. I don’t know how my mother and sisters took care of things — as a teenaged boy, I really didn’t want to know — but with no working toilet, when I had to urinate, I pissed out the attic window.

It wasn’t too bad: my bedroom was in the (barely heated) attic, and there were no houses across the street, because there was a ravine there, so I was able to just open the dormer window and let fly. The roof extended under that dormer window, and the urine went into the gutter.

Of course, urine isn’t the only bodily waste. “Number two”? That was at school, or anyplace else I could find on the weekends.

Bathing? Showers in the school gym locker room.

Yeah, that’s a nasty story, but that was my mother’s unexpected $400 expense, backdated fifty years. But that’s an experience which taught me what it was really like to be poor, and we weren’t the poorest people around.

Joe Biden knows nothing about this, Pete Buttigieg knows nothing about this, nobody in the whole damned Biden Administration has any flaming idea what poor people go through, and they are willing to keep adding on and keep adding on and keep adding on more ‘little’ expenses and more ‘sacrifices’ for the good of all.

We’re not poor now, thanks to a lifetime of hard work, but even at my advanced age, my memory is still good, and clear. Mao Zedong once sent the urban elites in China out into the fields, so learn how the peasants lived, and while I would never advocate that kind of totalitarian action, but at least those elites learned — if they survived it — how the other 90% lived. It would be nice if someone in the Biden Administration had some experience, some concept of what the President’s policies will do to people in this country.

Right now, it doesn’t seem as though they give a damn.