Author Archives: Dana Pico

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More public school officials fail to meet their responsibilities

People can get angry, sometimes over stupid things. People can respond to their anger by doing stupid things. Yes, we all do it, and I will admit to having done so in the past. But the people around them, if they have any authority, ought to be held responsible for letting things get out of hand. That’s the case in this situation:

Kansas school employee locked teen with Down syndrome in closet, storage cage, lawsuit says

August 17, 2024 / 3:48 PM EDT / CBS/AP

A paraeducator of a rural Kansas school district repeatedly shoved a teenager with Down syndrome into a utility closet, hit the boy and once photographed him locked in a cage used to store athletic equipment, a lawsuit claims.

The suit filed Friday in federal court said the paraprofessional assigned to the 15-year-old sent the photo to staff in the Kaw Valley district, comparing the teen to an animal and “making light of his serious, demeaning and discriminatory conduct.”

While the CBS article does not name the “paraprofessional,” the story in the Daily Mail, which admittedly goes for the sensational, said he was Albert Bahret. The image to the right comes from the Daily Mail, and was not in the CBS story. The Kansas City Star’s story is hidden behind a McClatchy paywall, but is available without a subscription via Yahoo! News.

Let’s be clear here: these things have been alleged in a lawsuit, and allegations in a lawsuit do not constitute proof.

The teen’s parents alleged in the suit that the paraprofessional did not have a key to the cage where sports equipment was kept and had to enlist help from other district staff to open the door and release their son, who is identified in the complaint only by his initials. The suit, which includes the photo, said it was not clear how long the teen was locked in the cage.

The lawsuit names Mr Bahret, other special education staff and the district, which enrolls around 1,100 and is based in St. Marys, about 30 miles northwest of Topeka.

Let’s assume that Mr bahret lost his temper, but any, and I stress any competent school administration would have immediately taken serious action against him. If he had to get others to help him release the handicapped boy, then other people in the school knew what had been done, and any of them had to have known that Mr Bahret needed to be immediately suspended pending investigation.

The suit said some staff expressed concerns to the special education teacher who oversaw the paraprofessional, as well as the district’s special education director. But the suit said neither of them intervened, even though there had been other complaints about the paraprofessional’s treatment of disabled students in the past.

If this is true, it has to be asked: how were the school’s “special education teacher” and the “district’s special education director” so poorly trained in their jobs that they did not recognize that Mr Bahret’s behavior was wholly improper and a huge liability to the school and the district? These people are all college graduates, supposedly educated on things like this, and had to understand that the “paraprofessional” needed to be removed from the school and reported to law enforcement, as soon as they became aware of the first complaint against him.

The suit said the director instructed subordinates not to report their concerns to the state child welfare agency. However, when the parents raised concerns, a district employee reported them to the agency, citing abuse and neglect concerns, the suit said.

There seems to be some major ass-covering going on, but such would not be necessary if the responsible school authorities had properly exercised their authority, at the proper time. Yes, the ‘mainstreaming’ of handicapped students is a tough policy, and one with which I do not agree, but the policy exists, and the school officials, who are dramatically overpaid based on the median family incomes in their communities, need to meet their responsibilities, or be fired.

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Karma comes to Taylor Lorenz!

Our regular readers, both of them, will remember Taylor Lorenz, a columnist at The Washington Post covering technology and online culture. Miss Lorenz most significant claim to fame was her investigation and doxing of Chaya Raichik, the owner of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok. The left hated LoTT, because Miss Raichik’s schtick was to find the idiocy that the left were posting to TikTok — and there was a lot of it — and expose it far more widely, to the ridicule of the libs. At the time, Miss Raichik was working as a real estate agent, and the exposure was designed to cost Miss Raichik her job.

In the end, it simply made Miss Raichik more popular and wealthy, but it also made Miss Lorenz more of a public figure as well, invited to some of the hoitiest and toitiest of Hollywood soirees.

Of course, despite her insistence that everybody wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — though she subsequently deleted it, she informed readers that she was at least somewhat immunocompromised — as late as August of 2023, she didn’t wear one herself.

Well, in a true sauce for the goose moment, it seems that Miss Lorenz has been outed for something. From NPR, not exactly an evil reich-wing site:

‘Washington Post’ reviews star columnist Taylor Lorenz’s ‘war criminal’ jab at Biden

by David Folkenflik | Thursday, August 15, 2024 | 7:55 PM EDT

Senior editors at the Washington Post are reviewing a prominent tech columnist’s private story on social media, which appears to label President Biden a “war criminal” in a photo.

The Post’s Taylor Lorenz attended a White House event for digital influencers on Wednesday. In the photo she shared with a circle of friends on Instagram, Biden appears over her shoulder; the damning caption rests just below him, accompanied by a text frowny face.

After the New York Post’s Jon Levine — a frequent critic of hers — revealed the Instagram photo caption yesterday in a tweet, Lorenz wrote back at him: “You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes.”

I am thoroughly amused.

A fact-check appended to Levine’s tweet cited her apparent denial. (The contextual note to the tweet says, “Taylor Lorenz says this is a digital manipulation which has added a false caption.”) Lorenz told her editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo.

NPR has obtained a screengrab of Lorenz’s actual post, which contained that caption. It was not shared with her wider Instagram audience of 143,000 followers.

Four people with direct knowledge of the private Instagram story confirmed its authenticity to NPR. They spoke to NPR on condition they not be identified due to the professional sensitivity of the situation for Lorenz.

“Our executive editor and senior editors take alleged violations of our standards seriously,” a spokesperson for the newspaper told NPR. “We’re aware of the alleged post and are looking into it.” Lorenz declined to comment.

The Post has already been cutting staff, due to the newspaper losing a lot of money. If Miss Lorenz loses her job over this — something which is certainly not guaranteed — would it not be a delicious bit of karma for trying to cost Miss Raichik her real estate position?

Lorenz has since told associates that a close friend took her posted picture and superimposed the caption upon it, as a joke, and that she shared it with the group on the private Instagram posting.

If that is true, then yes, Miss Lorenz has admitted posting it on Instagram. Perhaps she thought it was a joke, but as a social media savvy reporter, she should have realized just what a stink this would cause, as well as understanding that once something goes out into the internet, it can be seen by the wrong people, and used against her. Using utter stupidity as an excuse isn’t a good look.

Perhaps Miss Lorenz is now learning about sauce for the goose!

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Ivy League research associate wants clerks at Wawa to pay for her commute

Talia Borofsky, from her Twitter profile.

Cry me a river! Talia Borofsky is “a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton’s High Meadows Environmental institute, where she researches the evolution and ecology of cooperative hunting.” Dr Borofsky lives in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia but commutes to work at Princeton University, and she greatly saddened by the fact that cashiers at WalMart and hamburger flippers at McDonald’s won’t be paying as much for her daily commute!

Amtrak’s sudden fare increases bite the hand that feeds it

Amtrak recently raised multi-ride fares along the Northeast Corridor without adequate prior warning to its ridership. The drastic increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers, writes Talia Borofsky.

by Talia Borofsky | Thursday, August 15, 2024 | 12:00 PM EDT

In July Amtrak raised multi-ride fares along the Northeast Corridor by anywhere from 32% to 70% without directly notifying its ridership in advance.

Amtrak, a federally funded and federally majority-owned company, is meant to serve the public. The drastic fare increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers after the infrastructure bill dedicated a total of $22 billion in direct grants to the company.

You might think from Dr Borofsky’s first two paragraphs that her complaint is that she wasn’t notified far enough and directly enough in advance, but that’s not it. What upsets her is that she’s having to pay more for a direct service she receives.

Investopedia notes:

Amtrak receives considerable subsidies from both state and federal governments but it’s managed as a for-profit company. This isn’t unusual. No country in the world operates a passenger rail system without public support.

But Amtrak’s “for-profit” status is sadly ironic. The train company has never been profitable since its founding nearly fifty years ago. It’s only thanks to its subsidies that the company has survived.

In other words, Dr Borofsky’s daily commute has never been entirely paid for by her fares. It has always been subsidized by taxpayer dollars, many of which are taken from people who earn less money than she does. But hey, if you’re a daycare worker in Philly, or a laborer for a roofing company in Lexington, shouldn’t you be glad to know that some of the money you pay in taxes goes to pay for “a postdoctoral research associate” at an Ivy League university, who earned her doctorate at Stanford, the hoitiest and the toitiest of the colleges west of the Mississippi, to research “the evolution and ecology of cooperative hunting”?

As a postdoc at Princeton University, I commute from Philly to Princeton using Amtrak. This commute used to make financial sense; rents in Philadelphia are almost half the price of those in Princeton, and Princeton provided a helpful although limited commute subsidy.

However, the commute became unaffordable for me and likely many others on July 1; the 10-trip (one-way) ticket package between Princeton and Philly shot up from $230 to $390, and the monthly pass increased from $576 to $975. These sudden increases have impacted many postdocs and graduate students at Princeton, whose budgets were already strained by the previous fares.

There’s such a whiff of elitism from Dr Borofsky’s OpEd. As a “postdoctoral research associate” at an Ivy League university, she is paid much more than most Philadelphians. According to Glass Door:

The estimated total pay range for a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University is $57K–$67K per year, which includes base salary and additional pay. The average Postdoctoral Fellow base salary at Princeton University is $62K per year.

The minimum of $57,000 is slightly higher than the median household income of $56,517 for Philadelphians overall. But Dr Borofsky apparently believes that the baggers at Giant Food Mart or the clerk at Wawa brewing her large coffee for the train ride — yeah, I’m guessing about that last, but everyone in Philly should drink Wawa coffee! — should have to contribute a bit more to pay for her train ride.

Dr Borofsky continued to tell readers about Amtrak’s poor service, and that the suddenness of the fare increase was “exploitative.” I have no qualms with her point that the increase was sudden, nor that Amtrak’s service isn’t the greatest.

But it’s her concluding one-sentence paragraph that gets me:

Train travel should be viable for all, not just the wealthy.

No, train travel should be available to those who pay for the service. Why should I, a retiree, be required to pony up some of my tax dollars so that Dr Borofsky doesn’t have to pay for the service she receives? Why should the janitors at Princeton be required to help fund her commute?

The subtitle of her article states, “The drastic increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers,” but no; the drastic increase is a boon to the taxpayers, the ones who are already subsidizing her train ride. The good research associate should pay for the services she receives herself.

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This morning’s rant

In the superhero flick The Avengers, there’s a scene in which Loki, taken from the Norse God of Mischief, cows a large crowd in Germany with the shouted command, “Kneel!” Loki grins as he addresses the crowd, sarcastically asking if such is not their natural state, to kneel, to be ruled by others. Of Captain America and Iron Man save the day, and perhaps some of the more historically aware viewers would connect Captain America rescuing a German crowd from obeisance to an authoritarian dictator to events 74 years ago, but today I have to wonder: just how many Americans are willing to kneel before Loki?

We have an American electorate in which roughly half of the public seem willing to vote for politicians supporting the Biden Administration’s attempts to require all new vehicles sold in the United States to be plug-in electric or otherwise zero-emission by 2035, even though few new car buyers today have been willing to shell out their hard-earned dollars to buy one for their families. We can see our British cousins happily throwing people in jail for saying the wrong things, and polls of good American citizens show considerable support for restrictions on our freedom of speech and of the press. And when the federal, state and local governments over-reacted to the COVID-19 panicdemic — no, that’s not a typo; I spelled it exactly as I saw it — by restricting our freedom of religion, with the forced closing of churches, and our right of peaceable assembly, by restricting travel and gatherings, millions and millions of sheeple went blithely along with it. It took a change in the Justices on the Supreme Court to get those restrictions (mostly) ruled unconstitutional, and even then it was only in limited decisions.

We have seen the federal government declare that the ” Intentional refusal to use someone’s correct pronouns is equivalent to harassment and a violation of one’s civil rights,” and that “The EEOC guidance states, ‘intentionally and repeatedly using the wrong name and pronouns to refer to a transgender employee could contribute to an unlawful hostile work environment’ and is a violation of Title VII,” in their attempt to compel ‘correct’ speech by those people who disagree with the cockamamie notion the girls can be boys and boys can be girls. New York City has regulations which can punish businesses and employees for not going along with ‘preferred pronouns’ and names. The New York Times, which so adamantly defended its First Amendment rights in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), gave OpEd space to Andrew Marantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker, to write that Free Speech is Killing Us, and Chad Malloy, a male who thinks he’s a woman named ‘Parker,’ to tell readers How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech. Restrictions on speech actually equals free speech according to Mr Malloy, and I suppose the editors who accepted and printed his article!

Today’s Democrats are bewailing that AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee, spent money in several Democratic primary elections to defeat clearly anti-Semitic congressmen, even though those same Democrats used political action committees and scads of ‘outside money’ in the congressional campaigns of 2018 and 2020.

Today’s American left are willing to chip away at our right to keep and bear arms, and I continually see messages from the gun grabbers demanding people justify their ‘need’ for certain firearms, as though our rights are contingent upon other people believing we are exercising them properly.

I have said it many times before: today’s American left are pro-choice on only one thing. In everything else, they are willing to let the government control them, to order their lives, for our own good, don’t you know?

What has happened to America? How did we go from millions of men being willing to put their lives on the line to defeat fascism to now having millions of Americans willing to surrender their rights in the name of ‘order’?

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When the government tells you that inflation is down, look more closely at what has come down.

The picture looked homey enough, mom and dad at the table in the dining room, dad looking into the kitchen at his daughter and son and the family dog . . . and The Wall Street Journal’s photographer, Kristen Zies. 🙂

Decent looking middle-class home, kitchen with the light grey cabinets which came into fashion not long ago, grey-and-white quartz (?) countertop, stainless steel appliances, but, shudder!, laminate flooring. And, for Jake and Marie Tromberg, inflation has hit hard.

Inflation Hurts Most for the Things We Can’t Skimp On

Costs for child care, rent and car insurance are up. Inflation might be easing, but it doesn’t feel that way.

by Harriet Torey and Terell Wright | Monday, August 8, 2024 | 5:30 AM EDT

Inflation is slowing. So why doesn’t it feel that way?

After all, price increases for lots of items, like cable and shampoo, are indeed cooling. Prices for vehicles, gasoline, TVs and plane tickets have even dropped over the past year. And the overall pace of year-over-year inflation as measured by the Labor Department’s consumer-price index was down to 3% in its most recent reading—much, much lower than the recent high of 9.1% that it clocked two years ago.

But prices for many of the things that are hard to do without are still posting eye-watering increases. Rent and electricity bills are up 10% or more over the past two years, and car-insurance costs are up nearly 40%, according to the Labor Department’s index. Shoppers might be able to trade down from prime steak to cheaper cuts of meat at the supermarket, but they can’t really do the same thing with the water bill.

Car insurance? In Virginia, where the Tromburgs live, there’s a $600 non-compliance fee if you let your insurance lapse, and you still have to reinsure the vehicle. The Commonwealth may suspend your vehicle’s registration (license plates) and possibly your driver’s license. Insurance companies operating in the Commonwealth must notify the Department of Motor Vehicles if a vehicle’s insurance lapses.

“We’re beginning to run out of rope in how much we can substitute out,” said David Bieri, an economist and professor at Virginia Tech.

Rising prices have been front and center in the U.S. over the past three years, affecting how Americans feel about the economy and how they are planning to vote. A softening jobs market will only amplify their concerns.

I am reminded of 2016, when the government did everything it could to to persuade people that the economy was doing just fine, thank you very much, in their attempt to get Hillary Clinton elected:

Problem: Most Americans don’t believe the unemployment rate is 5%

by Heather Long | September 6, 2016 | 3:18 PM EDT

Heather Long

Americans think the economy is in far worse shape than it is.The U.S. unemployment rate is only 4.9%, but 57% of Americans believe it’s a lot higher than that, according to a new survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

The general public has “extremely little factual knowledge” about the job market and labor force, Rutgers found.

It’s another example of how experts on Wall Street and in Washington see the economy differently than the regular Joe. Many of the nation’s top economic experts say that America is “near full employment.” The unemployment rate has actually been at or below 5% for almost a year — millions of people have found jobs in what is the best period of hiring since the late 1990s.

But regular people appear to have their doubts about how healthy America’s employment picture is. Nearly a third of those surveyed by Rutgers believe unemployment is actually at 9%, or higher.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has tapped into this confusion. He has repeatedly called the official unemployment rate a “joke” and a even “hoax.”

At the time, while the official unemployment number, U-3, was 4.9%, the U-6 unemployment number[1]U-6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons … Continue reading was 9.6%, pretty much in line with what the Rutgers survey guessed. As George Orwell put it in 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Back to the Journal:

Families with young children are also paying higher prices for child care. Costs have risen 6.4% over the past two years, in line with the overall CPI. Because daycare bills can be as big as the rent payment or the mortgage, even a relatively small increase can feel like a lot.

The median price to put an infant in center-based care in 2022 was more than $1,400 a month in major metro areas, according to the Labor Department. A 6.4% increase puts that bill closer to $1,500.

(Brendan and Alexis) Madigan’s daycare costs have risen much faster. The daycare bill for their older daughter shot up last month to $1,650 from $1,200 a month. Daycare for their younger daughter, who starts in two weeks, will be $1,800 a month. They searched for cheaper options but quickly realized that the price was the standard.

“I would have hoped that where my career path is at, and with my wife working as well, that we would have some financial flexibility,” said Madigan, 32.

Doing some back-of-the-envelope “cipherin'”, as Jethro Bodine would have put it, that comes out to $3,450 per month, or $41,400 a year. Assuming a total tax bite of 33%, that would require gross earnings of $55,062 just to pay for daycare! Does it really make sense for both of the Madigans to work, just so their kids can be reared by daycare workers? The Madigans live in Durham, North Carolina, a metropolitan area to be sure, but not the most expensive place in the US.

There’s more at the Journal’s original, mostly going over statistics and throwing in some human-interest stories, but the message is clear: inflation has come down significantly on the things people do not have to buy every week or every month. But on the expenses of daily life in America, people are having to pay more and more.

References

References
↑1 U-6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.
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Anti-Semitism in America isn’t about religion

It was just last night, at 10:14 PM EDT, that I published an article pointing out that Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff opted against choosing Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as her running mate, noting that, despite the denials, it was all because he and his wife are Jewish. With the open drive toward anti-Semitism by the young and the ignorant among the harder left, and Mrs Emhoff’s husband, Douglas Emhoff also being Jewish, there’s just no way the Vice President and her staff would make a selection which would drive the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel leftists away.

And on Monday morning, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to Zev Eleff, president and professor of American Jewish History at Gratz College in Melrose Park, that barely glossed over — if you can even call it that much — the radical anti-Semitic left in the decision:

Josh Shapiro, the veepstakes, and the role of faith in presidential politics

I’m proud that the governor was reportedly on the short list of Kamala Harris running mates. Yet I was also troubled by those who asked whether America was “ready” for a Jewish vice president.

by Zev Eleff | Monday, August 12, 2024 | 6:37 AM EDT

The polarizing discussion surrounding Gov. Josh Shapiro’s faith and his recent bid to join Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket struck a very different tone than the Jewish presidential question of 1959. Back then, the journalist Bernard Postal polled a who’s who of American politics — Earl Warren, Hubert Humphrey, Dwight Eisenhower, to name-drop a handful of the 30 respondents — on a very pithy question: “Can a Jew be elected president?”

Postal was prompted by the wide speculation that John F. Kennedy, the Catholic senator from Massachusetts, would run for president in the next election. “I believe that a candidate’s religion should have no bearing upon his qualifications for the Office of President,” wrote Kennedy to Postal. “Accordingly, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews should all base their appeal to the voters upon their record of accomplishments and their program or action.”

Postal reported that most agreed with Kennedy, hopeful “that before too long the voters will do away with the tacit but nonetheless effective religious test that has traditionally barred all but white Protestants from the Presidency and the Vice Presidency.”

There’s a lot more at the original, but, like so many historians, he has missed the point!

Dr Eleff’s OpEd piece tells the reader something of the history of religious tolerance, as it slowly gained a foothold in the American body politic. While there were a few, and I stress the description few, anti-Semitic influences and incidents in the United States, the bigotry against Jews, Muslims, and Catholics in the United States was fairly minor as far as being based on their faith. It was more pronounced based upon ethnicity, and ethnicity was not part of the professor’s OpEd.

Catholics don’t really come with an ethnicity link in the United States, other than we are primarily white and Hispanic; the percentage of blacks who are Catholic has always been small. For Muslims, much of the ethnic mix are of Arabic or African extraction.

Jews? In the United States, they are almost exclusively white, and so indistinguishable in appearance, other than by the way some sects of Judaism in the US dress, that the Nazis in Germany actually published a “Jewface” caricature of ‘Jewish physiognomy,’ because Jews weren’t that easy to distinguish in many cases just by looking. The Nazis wanted everyone to be able to know who was Jewish! In the United States, in most of Europe, Jews are characterized primarily by ethnicity. In a way that would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetically sad, so many good, white Europeans and Americans view Jews as not being white, while much of the Arab Middle East sees Jews as too white, and not ethnically connected to the Holy Land.

Do Mr and Mrs Shapiro attend the synagogue? Does Mr Emhoff go to Temple? If anyone has asked those questions, I haven’t seen them, but my point is that the discrimination against Jews is not really religious, at least not in the 21st century. We all seem to know that Jews have a different faith than Christians or Muslims — though I would point out here that every Catholic Mass on Sunday has a reading from the Old Testament, the pre-Christian Jewish holy books — but how many actually understand Judaism, as a religion, to be offended by the religious differences?

And let’s tell the truth here: a large percentage of Americans who might tell you that they are Christian don’t attend church. Joe Biden is famously Catholic, and attends Mass frequently, but his being a Democrat is far, far, far more important to him than being Catholic!

Today’s anti-Semitism is almost entirely political. We good, white Christians drove the Jews out of Europe, because the Nazis tried to kill them all. Half of the Jews of Europe were killed by the Third Reich, but those who survived were thoroughly dispossessed. They couldn’t return to their homes in Europe because they had no homes in Europe, and even if they had, their neighbors would have been the same good, white Christians who turned them over to the Nazis. Zionism was a political movement, started long before the Nazis came to power, but it became a political and social imperative thanks to the Nazis.

Mr Shapiro was not chosen as Mrs Emhoff’s running mate because he is religiously Jewish, but because his ethnic and family history is Jewish. Among today’s fanatical and anti-Semitic left, that’s all it takes.

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Rubbing my hands in glee Could the pro-Hamas radicals recreate the 1968 Democratic National Convention?

1968 Democratic National Convention.

Regardless of their denials, Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff did not select Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) to be her runningmate because he is Jewish. More, his wife, Lori Shapiro, is also Jewish, as is the Vice President’s husband, Douglas Emhoff. Mrs Emhoff and her campaign staffers had a big picture of how the anti-Semitic far left of the Democratic Party would react to having three Jews out of four on the ticket.

So, she instead selected Governor Tim Walz (D-MN), as the least offensive candidate, but it still might not work. From The Washington Post:

Pro-Palestinian protesters vow massive showing at Democratic convention

Activists say the replacement of President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris does not affect their plans for a show of anger and dissent.

By Yasmeen Abutaleb | Sunday, August 11, 2024 | 6:00 AM EDT | Updated: 3:45 PM EDT

BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. — The scenes and stenches that greeted Hamza AbdulQader when he crossed Egypt’s border into Gaza in mid-March were far worse than the devastating videos he had watched as war raged in the territory.

I have deleted three useless paragraphs at this point, in which the practitioners of the ‘new’ journalism begin with a small story as a segue into the larger story.

Democratic leaders hoped that Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the ticket would shrink the protests, since she was not the architect of President Joe Biden’s Gaza policies and has been more vocal in challenging Israel and voicing empathy for Palestinians. But to many activists, Harris has not done nearly enough.

“We don’t expect any changes — we’re still anticipating that there will be tens of thousands of people in the streets,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair for the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and a spokesman for the Coalition to March on the DNC, an amalgamation of more than 200 advocacy groups and community organizations. AbdulQader added, “Unless she clearly takes a stance and says this is not okay … that door is shut.”

The night that Biden dropped out of the presidential race on July 21, more than 80 people logged in to the coalition’s weekly Zoom meeting, Abudayyeh said, and organizers said they were moving ahead as planned even though it looked like Harris would soon become the Democratic nominee. They asked if there were objections, and no one raised concerns.

The same night, the coalition put out a statement saying, “Democratic Party leadership switching out their presidential nominee does not wash the blood of over 50,000 Palestinians off their hands. When it comes to the genocide in Gaza there is no difference between Biden, Harris, or any of the likely candidates for the nomination.”

Hey, that’s great! Recreate 1968, please!

I have a difficult time picturing many of the pro-‘Palestinian,’ pro-Hamas demonstrators voting for former President Donald Trump, but I’d be perfectly happy if they were just so angry that they don’t vote at all: that not only takes potential votes away from the top of the ticket, but in the ‘down-ballot’ races as well.

American Jews normally give roughly ¾ of their votes to the Democrats, but if they see the Usual Suspects rioting in front of the Democratic National Convention, and Mrs Emhoff and her minions trying to mealy-mouth platitudes to the pro-Hamas crowd, that number just might change. They’ll realize the two-faced actions, and then remember that it was President Trump and his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, engineered the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and which was later supported by Bahrain and Oman. They’ll also remember that it was President Trump who finally ended the practice of American Presidents certifying every six months that the American embassy in Israel could not be moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, as required by a 1996 law, and moved our embassy to the Israeli capital.

There’s still a lot that can happen, and only the Lord knows who will win the elections, but anything that weakens the Democrats is a good thing.

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Hit the road, Jack! Three anti-Semitic Columbia deans 'were resigned'

The First Street Journal previously reported on three anti-Semitic deans at Columbia University being permanently removed and placed on indefinite leave from their administrative jobs over offensive texts during an alumni weekend event about Jewish life on campus. An audience member, who was seated behind one of the deans took photos of the administrators’ texts and first shared them last month with the Washington Free Beacon.

Well, the indefinite suspension is now over. From The New York Times:

3 Columbia University Deans Who Sent Insulting Texts Have Resigned

The deans were put on leave earlier in the summer after sending messages that disparaged Jewish panelists. A fourth dean, who is tenured, will remain at the university.

by Sharon Otterman | Thursday, August 8, 2024

Three Columbia University deans who exchanged disparaging text messages that the university president said “touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May are resigning, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The deans, who had responsibility for undergraduate student affairs, sent the biting and sarcastic messages as they reacted in real time to Jewish speakers expressing concern about antisemitism on campus during the two-hour event.

In June, Nemat Shafik, the university president, placed the three deans on indefinite leave as an investigation proceeded.

In the texts, one dean suggested that a Jewish speaker was playing up concerns for fund-raising purposes. Another sent vomit emojis in reaction to the mention of a college newspaper opinion piece written by one of the school’s rabbis.

So, they’ve ‘resigned.’ The Times subtitle tells the reader everything that he needs to know: a fourth dean, who has academic tenure, did not resign, which means that the three who did leave resigned ahead of being fired. Firing a tenured person is much more difficult, so professor Josef Sorett, a scholar on religion and race, who did not participate to the same extent as Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer, Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life, and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support, gets to keep his job. Dr Sorett, who publicly apologized, stays while the other three are wailing at the song “Hit the Road, Jack“.

If it took over a month to force the three to resign, one thing is obvious: there were lawyers involved. The only question not answered by the Times is: how much of a golden parachute were the three given?

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Man, that Larry Krasner and his office are really stupid!

This site has previously noted the charges against former Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial. Officer Dial shot and killed criminal Eddie Irizarry when he believed that Mr Irizarry was reaching for a weapon.

The city’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal-loving District Attorney charged Officer Dial with “first-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, and related offenses,” though, as you can see from Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502 above, first-degree murder was never an appropriate charge.

An at least reasonable case could be made for charging PA Title 18 §2503 Voluntary Manslaughter, a first degree felony, but there’s a high bar for the prosecution to surmount.

  • 18 §2503(b) Unreasonable belief killing justifiable. — A person who intentionally or knowingly kills an individual commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he believes the circumstances to be such that, if they existed, would justify the killing under Chapter 5 of this title (relating to general principles of justification), but his belief is unreasonable.

Mr Krasner would have to prove that Officer Dial had an “unreasonable” belief that he was justified in shooting Mr Irizarry. Mr Irizarry had been driving erratically, and when he finally pulled over, he kept the car window up, was non-compliant, and raised his hand while holding a knife.

A Philadelphia judge dismissed all charges against Officer Dial, ruling that the prosecution had not presented evidence that a crime has been committed, so naturally the Usual Suspects decided that a riot was in order. Naturally, Mr Krasner refiled the charges, including first degree murder, and Mr Dial was rearrested, and denied bail.

Now, after nearly a year in prison, without having been convicted of anything, the former Officer is once again free on bail.

Mark Dial was released on bail after the Philly DA’s office dropped his first-degree murder charge

Dial had been in custody since last fall after he was charged with fatally shooting Eddie Irizarry in a traffic stop in Kensington.

by Chris Palmer, Ellie Rushing, and Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, August 9, 2024 | 10:50 AM EDT

The District Attorney’s Office has withdrawn a charge of first-degree murder against former police officer Mark Dial, a decision that prosecutors were effectively forced to make by a judge after failing to tell Dial’s attorneys about a key piece of evidence they intend to use against him at trial.

The decision, made Thursday, allowed Dial to be released from jail on bail to await a new trial date, now with a lead charge of third-degree murder. His case — which had been scheduled to begin in September — will now go before a jury in May 2025.

Dial’s bail was set at $200,000, and he paid the required 10% to secure his release shortly after noon Thursday, court records show.

The development served as the latest twist in the high-profile case, one that has taken an unusually circuitous path through the courts. Dial is accused of fatally shooting Eddie Irizarry during a traffic stop in Kensington last year, and his prosecution has now been tossed out, reinstated, and downgraded over the last 11 months.

Just what kind of ineptitude infests the District Attorney’s Office that they first made a mistake which got the charges dismissed, and now, if the first paragraph in the Inquirer’s story is accurate, they f(ornicated) up again. “(A)n unusually circuitous path”? That’s a polite way of saying that the DAO has been completely inept.

What was this whole charade other than an effort by Mr Krasner to punish Mr Dial pre-emptively, in case he couldn’t actually win a conviction?

Prosecutors months ago had hired an expert to prepare a report on whether Dial violated Pennsylvania’s use-of-force law for police when he shot Irizarry, a question that goes to the heart of the case and will determine whether Dial should be convicted. But prosecutors told Dial’s attorneys about the expert’s report only this week — something Dial’s lawyers said was unreasonable, and didn’t give them enough time to prepare a rebuttal.

Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson agreed, and said he did not want to delay the case and keep Dial incarcerated for months over an issue that prosecutors had effectively created.

“Why didn’t you tell them you were hiring an expert?” he said in court this week, later adding: “You sat on this for 10, 11 months.”

Judge Bronson offered the compromise, to reduce the top charge to third degree murder, which made Mr Dial eligible for bail. Prosecutors then urged the judge to restrict Mr Dial to house arrest, to punish him further, but the defense noted, to the judge’s satisfaction, that Mr Dial did not pose a flight risk.

All of the charges should be dropped, and Mr Dial compensated for the time he spent behind bars unjustly, and that compensation should come from Mr Krasner’s personal wealth.