It has been pointed out countless times on The First Street Journal that The Philadelphia Inquirer only cares about individual homicides when the victim is an ‘innocent,’ a person already of some note, or a cute little white girl.
And so it has been with the killing of Josh Kruger. Continue reading
Don’t get me wrong: I like Seth Williams. He has been a strong advocate for “returning citizens,” by which me means those people formerly incarcerated, and trying to earn their way back to a decent and respectable life in law-abiding society. More, he has been strongly supportive of law enforcement in Philadelphia, and critical of the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating defense lawyer now serving as District Attorney, Larry Krasner. As you can see from the image of his Twitter biography, not only do I follow him on Twitter, he even follows me back! 🙂
Mr Williams, from January 4, 2010 until July 24, 2017, was the District Attorney for Philadelphia, and, along with Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, helped reduce the city’s terrible homicide rate, from 331 in 2008, when Mr Nutter was elected, to 277 in Mr Nutter’s last year in office, 2015. Since Mr Nutter left office, and Commissioner Ramsey resigned, the homicide rate has soared, never below 300 again, and over 500 in 2021 and 2022; while 2020 saw ‘only’ 499 homicides, there’s strong reason to believe that the total was actually 502, and then revised downward. Even with the homicide rate down this year, the city is almost certainly going to see over 400 murders in 2023. Continue reading
We have noted, really too many times to note all of them, that The Philadelphia Inquirer is not really concerned about individual homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl is the victim. On Monday morning, it was reported that Josh Kruger, a freelance journalist of at least some note in Philly was murdered, which we noted here, and the left in Philly — Rue Landau, Inquirer reporter Ellie Rushing, Jordan Winkler, Mayor Jim Kenney, the Liberty City Dems, state Senator Nikil Saval, The New York Times, WPVI-TV, Inquirer editorial writer Daniel Pearson, CNN, Taj Magruder, Maggie Hart, and an untold number of other people are all mourning his death.
Yet what about the three people murdered early this morning, along with a fourth person critically wounded, in the Crascentville section of the city, and the ‘person of interest’ suspected in the killings? They are, as far as the media have told us thus far, not ‘somebodies,’ and there are few tweets about them, few messages I have seen, and, as far as I can tell, other than friends and family, nobody f(ornicating) cares. Mayor Kenney has said nothing about those four people, whom I assume to be black from this photo in the Inky. Mr Kruger was white.
And you know what? I am not surprised in the least!
I did not follow Josh Kruger on Twitter, though I frequently saw his tweets — sorry, Elon Musk, but I can’t bring myself to call it “X” — because he was followed by twelve other people I do follow. Mr Kruger is a Philly liberal, who occasionally made a point from the left that isn’t bat guano insane, and occasionally made decent arguments. I have interacted with him on Twitter previously, though not frequently, and wrote about his complaint that Wawa was pulling out of Center City.
But, even if I disagreed with him politically, he’s still someone I ‘knew,’ even if only over the internet, so it is disturbing to read that he was murdered: Continue reading
Homicides are down in the City of Brotherly Love, as we have previously reported. On May 25th, we noted that it was possible that Philadelphia could see as few as 450 murders in 2023. Under recently resigned Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the city saw 499 homicides in 2020 — though there’s reason to suspect that 502 is the correct figure — 562 in 2021, and 516 in 2022.
With 330 officially listed homicides as of October 1st, the 274th day of the year, Philly has seen 1.204 homicides per day, which works out to a projected 439.60 killings for the year.
That decrease in homicides is good news, at least if over 400 murders can be regarded as anything other than bad news, but the killings are still happening. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Police shoot man suspected of killing 3 people in Philly quadruple shooting
The shooter is believed to be a relative of one of the victims, according to police, who said he fled the scene in a blue Honda Pilot.
by Beatrice Forman | Monday, October 2, 2023 | 7:55 AM EDT | Updated: 9:31 AM EDT
Philadelphia police shot a man they suspected of killing three people during a quadruple shooting inside a Crescentville home early Monday morning. Continue reading
Just as the House of Representatives sends a continuing resolution to the Senate to keep the federal government from shutting down, a CR which maintains the current, hideous level of spending, but strips out money for Ukraine, we get this news from across the pond:
UK aims to offer military training inside Ukraine, minister says
Saturday, September 30, 2023 | 5:51 PM EDT
LONDON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Britain’s government wants to deploy military instructors to Ukraine, in addition to training Ukrainian armed forces in Britain or other Western countries as at present, British defence minister Grant Shapps said in a newspaper interview.
To date, Britain and its allies have avoided a formal military presence in Ukraine to reduce the risk of a direct conflict with Russia.
Britain has provided five-week military training courses to around 20,000 Ukrainians over the past year, and intends to train a similar number going forward.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Shapps said there was scope to offer military training within Ukraine after a discussion on Friday with British military chiefs.
“I was talking today about eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well,” he was quoted as saying. “Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things ‘in country’,” he added.
Sending American troops to train the South Vietnamese, but not to fight their battles for them; how did that work out? By November 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated, there were at least 16,000 US military ‘advisors’ in Vietnam.
Wars tend to be unpredictable things, but one thing is certain: British soldiers, who are quite literally NATO soldiers, actually in Ukraine, become targets. I’d like to think that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would be sensible enough to tell his army not to target the Brits, but even if he does precisely that, poor intelligence, rotten guidance, lousy communications, and just the plain misfortunes of war could lead to some British troops being blasted away.
And what happens then? Such would not technically be an attack on NATO nations, since the British troops would be in Ukraine, but this looks a whole lot like the stupidity which led to over 58,000 names on the Vietnam War memorial wall, all for a war we just plain lost.
Losing the war in Vietnam was a tragedy, but it wasn’t an existential one. We didn’t lose our freedom, we were not conquered by the Communists. It was a loss at distance, a loss which cost us a lot of money and a lot of blood, but we survived just fine, thank you very much.
Ukraine is not the same thing. For Ukraine to win, Russia has to lose, and a Russia that is losing, especially if Vladimir Vladimirovich sees himself as possibly losing his hold on power, might react in ways which we would not like at all.
Brianna Coppage, via St Clair School District, through St Louis Post-Dispatch.
The internet was supposed to help more people become more informed about what is happening in the world around us. It seems to have another function as well, exposing just how f(ornicating) stupid some people can be! Brianna Coppage has given us a whole new take on what living in the Show Me State means! Continue reading
Would anyone have expected anything different from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong? She knows that she has to condemn the riots, but she tries to understand the rioters and looters, and wants to say that she can’t really blame them. Continue reading
This really isn’t much of a surprise, because when the #BlackLivesMatter marchers rioted through 2020’s Summer of Hate, they mostly burned stuff in heavily black neighborhoods. Continue reading